If someone has newly moved to New England from anywhere else in the US, he may wonder just what a New Englander is like. If he moved here from the south, he will find that no one comes over within a week of his move to give him a baked goodie and to say, y’all drop by anytime. Actually, if you have ever lived in the south, you will recognize this as friendliness, and not really an open invitation to drop by any day of the week and any time of the day.  It’s just a very friendly welcome to the neighborhood.  In the 1950’s in the north they had welcome wagon ladies who dropped by. Now there is the internet and the assumption that only those who have impaired computer skills would actually want to meet and circulate with neighbors and make new friends. In fact, churches in the south have a lot more holy rollers than those in the north, and the parishioners are more outgoing and friendlier than the New England ones are. That’s why religious people in New England are known as the Frozen Chosen.

To define a New Englander you have to come up with a definition. The other day I was in the library. I was one of three people in line to see the librarian and check out books.  The woman ahead of me was vigorously discussing with the librarian a question she had about a book she was returning. She asked the librarian if she had ever had the same feeling that she had had when reading this book that was all about how to do something. She said: a book about how to do something is just not like actually doing the thing. You mean it’s a book about sex, I asked. The librarian, the questioner and I all burst out laughing. The third person in line, behind me, said, “Not in a library.” That made it apparent that the librarian, the questioner and I were not born in New England, and the shocked third lady in line was a New Englander, meaning she was a prude or puritanical. Actually, it’s kind of ironic that everyone thinks of the Puritans as so strictly religious and prim and proper, because some historians have carefully searched birth records of early Puritans and found that over one-third of the times a first baby was born to a Puritan, it was born only six months after marriage. Considering the fact that they did not have neo-natal nurseries in hospitals (or even any hospitals) in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds, it is amazing that the vast majority of those premature babies survived. More likely the early birth after marriage happened because of premarital sex and a shotgun wedding, just not something admitted or openly talked about.

Another definition for New Englander would be someone who is thrifty, who does not throw out something he might use in the next century. This is also known as not buying something you are looking at in a store because there must be a store someplace else in New England where you can buy this cheaper.  In other words, a cheapskate.

And how about the term stubborn?  A New Englander is someone who does not give up.  He figures he can never be wrong as long as he keeps to his point. After all, sometimes a New Englander is called a Swamp Yankee. This is not someone who lives in a swamp, like a muskrat, but rather, someone who is thrifty, stubborn and prudish.

I went to a New England restaurant recently for a take-out lunch.  I ordered a sandwich and two desserts, one for today and one for tomorrow (we must be optimistic and give ourselves something to look forward to, after all). At this restaurant they give the customer a playing card once you make your order, note the playing card on the order, and then deliver the order to the customer with that playing card. After a bit the waiter gave me a bag and asked me what playing card he was holding in his hand.  That should have been my clue, but I was hungry. I said I don’t know, and he snatched my playing card, dropped a bag on the table, said good-bye and left.  When I got home, the bag only had my sandwich in it, no desserts. I was just cheated out of the $5.50 the two desserts cost me. Why not drive back to the restaurant and complain?  It was pouring out and the drops were verging on freezing rain. But how could I have failed to check the inside of the bag before leaving the restaurant?  After all, I was born and raised in New York, and we from the Empire state are cautious.  I didn’t check the bag because I have lived in New England for so long now that I have become trusting.  Sigh. I guess I could visit New York for a day or so and relearn to suspect all vendors as guilty until proven innocent.

So was the waiter lazy, incompetent, or planning to keep the two already paid for desserts for himself? I don’t know, but I can assure you that the fact that a skunk mysteriously appeared in his basement recently had nothing to do with me.

Angela Hawkins Fichter