<p><a href=“down%20at%20the%20beach”>quote</a>.
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<p>I think you meant “down 'e ocean.”</p>
<p>I’ve said “pocketbook” forever. That’s what my mother and all the other ladies in my small southern hometown always called it so I followed suit… My cousins who lived in Richmond called it a purse. I just thought that’s what “city” people called them when I was a kid.</p>
<p>I grew up in southern Virginia and always said “pocketbook” too. I’m not sure when I started using “purse” but I use both now.</p>
<p>I was trying to think of other regional differences–more serious ones–that a kid might want to know about before going to school in a different part of the country. One that I noticed back in my day was that people in different parts of the country think about race and ethnicity differently–I’m not necessarily talking about prejudice, exactly. Where I grew up in southern Virginia, people generally thought of themselves as black or white. When I went to college in New England, I was surprised to learn that people from other parts of the country thought of themselves as Italian, or Greek, or Irish, etc. There was a consciousness of national origin that was pretty much absent where I grew up. There may be similar differences in other parts of the country, too.</p>
<p>^^^^^Our experience was different: We found the Maryland crab to be rather small compared to what we get on the Oregon coast.</p>
<p>In Chicago, young women carry purses; old ladies carry pocketbooks. It’s just the opposite in parts of the East, or so I told.</p>
<p>Chicago: We do not put ketchup on hot dogs and we cheer for the White Sox.</p>
<p>I think of pocketbook as an age thing, not a regional thing - I grew up using pocketbook to refer to the big thing you carried and purse to refer to the female equivalent of a man’s wallet (the smaller thing that carried bills and credit cards), but it seems to have morphed over the years to handbag / purse to describe a pocketbook and wallet to describe a purse.</p>
<p>I’ve lived in Chicago for close to 30 years and honestly, I’ve never seen anyone really give a darn what condiment anyone else uses on a hot dog. Both are available. And we can cheer for the Cubs, you know :-)</p>
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<p>To me, a big difference is that in the Northeast, most people I knew were Catholic or Jewish - or if they were Protestant, they self-identified by specific denominations (Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, etc.). I don’t recall people identifying themselves as “Christian” per se. That term didn’t really gain a foothold, IMO, til after Jimmy Carter / born-again Christian entered the vernacular. I’ve also heard that there are people in the South who don’t consider Catholics Christian, which blows my mind.</p>
<p>There were only two Jewish families in our town. There were more Catholics but not a lot. I didn’t know any. The tiny Catholic Church in our town served probably five counties. </p>
<pre><code>Like Hunt, in our town (northeastern NC) it was either black or white unless you count the different Baptists…the Southern Baptists, the Freewill Baptists,the Primitive Baptists, the Independent Baptists and then there was the Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians…rumor had it that they were “almost Catholic”
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<p>So yes, a student from a very culturally mixed area won’t see so much of that if they come south unless the school is in a large city.</p>
<p>I also recall that people knew what church you went to. There was one Jewish kid in my high school class of over 200. There were a few Catholic kids. But things were so polarized black/white that nobody cared too much if you were Jewish or Catholic. There were Jewish members of the country club–but not black members.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I have to note that it’s still not entirely clear whether the Catholic Church recognizes non-Catholics as truly Christian, so it’s not too surprising that some Protestant groups believe the reverse. I can also remember several denominations that believed that nobody outside their own small group was saved–or at least, nobody who was baptized as an infant and not later in life was saved.</p>
<p>It’s also true that little of this was linked to politics until Carter, and then Reagan.</p>
<p>Interesting; I’ve never, ever heard that Catholics don’t consider Protestants Christian.</p>
<p>“I’ve also heard that there are people in the South who don’t consider Catholics Christian, which blows my mind.”</p>
<p>This is very prevalent in some areas of the South and Southwest. </p>
<p>“Interesting; I’ve never, ever heard that Catholics don’t consider Protestants Christian.”</p>
<p>I’ve never heard this, either.</p>
<p>I’m currently Catholic but was raised in the Lutheran Church. The Catholic Church tends to view Protestants as somewhat lesser Christians. The big difference is in how the Eucharist is viewed - Catholics believe only they have the “true presence” of Christ. </p>
<p>I think this discussion is getting off-track though - it’s supposed to be about regional differences that might surprise a college student, not about differences in religions.</p>
<p>^ ^That doesn’t mean, however, that Catholics would feel unwelcome in the South.
The Catholic churches in the south tend to be fairly traditional and conservative, reflective of the conservative environment around them. In some Catholic dioceses in the South, the local parishes are quite strong in terms of number of converts, young men attending seminary, etc. compared to the North. Certainly, I think Catholic students considering universities in the South would find a strong, supportive Catholic community at the larger public universities, for example. </p>
<p>In general, one thing that stands out more in the South and Southwest is that public expressions of religion are more common. For example, I’ve frequently seen people saying grace before eating in restaurants, even fast food restaurants. I’ve been in bookstores/cafes in college towns in which I’ve overheard many a theological discussion. I rarely would see or hear this in the North.</p>
<p>Years ago, growing up in Chicago, people tended to dress up somewhat for Sunday Mass. Over the years, it became much more casual. In the South, though, I still see many more people that dress up somewhat for Sunday Mass. Again, this probably reflects the more conservative environment around them.</p>
<p>I’ve spent some time recently doing some work in Nebraska. I’ve also see this at Catholic churches in Lincoln, even among the students at the Catholic parish at UNL. Many of these students are from small towns and rural areas of Nebraska, which generally are fairly conservative.</p>
<p>In my home town, when I was a kid the Catholic Church was the only integrated church.</p>
<p>When my son’s 8th grade class couldn’t travel to Israel after 9/11, the school chose to send them to the Southern US as the next best thing to a “foreign” experience. Nuff said?</p>
<p>A noticeable regional difference, I think: normal talking speed. My freshman roommate from Rhode Island thought I spoke way too slowly and wanted to drag the words out of me! I would not have expected someone to be impatient with my rate of speech. </p>
<p>Aside from pace-of-life issues, I think that Midwesterners might have adopted a slower speaking speed because of the large number of German and Scandinavian immigrants when the whole region was first settled. Perhaps the waves of non-English-speaking immigrants that settled in the Northeast arrived quite a while after the local speed of English speech had been set, preponderantly by native English speakers? </p>
<p>This probably doesn’t apply anywhere in urban areas, which are probably speeded-up, overall.</p>
<p>^^ Ha…When I was young kid in Chicago, I think I lived in an Irish Catholic ghetto.
Of course, many parishes at that time tended to be predominantly one ethnic group, whether Irish, Italian, or Polish. There weren’t many African-American Catholics at that time, although they would have been welcome.</p>
<p>One of the nice things about many Catholic student parishes (at least at larger universities is that they tend to be fairly international with students from Africa, Korea, and Latin America, all areas with fairly sizable numbers of Catholics.</p>