Eight Years in New England

Reflections and digressions

Photo by Leslie Cross on Unsplash

In August of 2016, I moved to New Haven, Connecticut. It was a small step into the partial unknown. I’d traveled widely across the United States but hadn’t seen much of New England. There was a family road trip to Boston, Maine, and New Hampshire when I was 14, but that was it. My first time in Connecticut was for the interview with the University of New Haven, which resulted in the professor job I hold today. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of the area. I knew all the stereotypes of the Northeast, but also knew stereotypes, while often somewhat accurate, are unreliable. What would I find in the dog-eat-dog world of stock brokers and financial analysts? After 22 years in Illinois and five in Colorado, I knew it would be a shift. Since then I’ve spent 8 years in Connecticut, all in the New Haven area. I’ve traveled throughout the state (which is not that hard), visited Vermont around 20 times, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire around 5 times each, and made it to Maine once. Below are my reflections on Connecticut and New England more generally.

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A brief aside: New England comprises Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. It DOES NOT include any part of the city, county, or state of New York. It certainly doesn’t include New Jersey. It’s one of the few things everyone in New England agrees on.

The Northeast includes all of New England as well as New York, New Jersey, and Eastern Pennsylvania. Where the borderline is within Pennsylvania is unclear. Philadelphia is definitely in the Northeast and Pittsburg is definitely not, regardless of what the US Census Bureau thinks.

The East Coast is toughest to define. It includes the entire Northeast, but how far it extends down the coast is unclear. I include the Mid-Atlantic, which comprises Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, but then it gets a little grey. Florida is not part of the East Coast despite having the longest coastline. No one says they are “visiting the East Coast” on a trip to Miami. I don’t have a firm opinion on whether the Carolinas and Georgia are part of the East Coast. I’d place them in the Southeast, but I’m willing to change my mind, especially as traditional East Coasters migrate there en masse.

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The first thing to know about New England is the competing narratives about the region are contradictory. The first is that New England is the land of old money. This is the New England of polo matches, country clubs, and boat shoes. The New England of colonial heritage and descendants of the pilgrims. It’s the home of Paul Newman and The Bushes. These New Englanders drink mimosas in the morning and dine on caviar in the evenings. Basically Gilmore Girls, except unplanned pregnancies don’t normally result in a child.

The second narrative is one of industrial decline. The New England that was the heart of the colossal American engine at the turn of the 20th century, but has been dying a death of a thousand factory closures ever since. One of abandoned warehouses and empty parking lots. The prime destination during the Great Migration and the place where millions moved to just to find the jobs were moving out. Today that New England is gritty; dealing with high prices, deteriorating infrastructure, and a troubling drug problem.

Despite being at odds with each other, both narratives are true. There really are polo matches (and yes, stopping divots is extremely satisfying). People do trace their ancestry back to the Pilgrims. And there are abandoned factories everywhere. Some are being demolished with the land being left vacant, even fewer replaced by new apartment blocks. None are reopening as manufacturing hubs. Empty hulks litter the region. So yes, both stories are true. The two narratives don’t intermingle much, more exist side by side (but not cheek by jowl - the former is good at keeping the latter at arm’s length). That is the fundamental story of New England. Old money and new poverty.

Beyond that, there is much to admire and lament about the region.

Perhaps the best thing is the sheer amount of stuff there is to do. New England is chockfull of landmarks, monuments, attractions, museums, and features. Love nature? Spend some time on the water (either salt or fresh), hike up a mountain, stroll through a forest, or try to spot some of the hundreds of bird species that pass through the region. Maybe you’ll even get lucky and see some bigger wildlife, which includes black bears and even moose. Coming from the Midwest, it never ceases to amaze me how beautiful the drives are throughout the area. The size of the trees is astounding. They grow steriodically towards the sky, exploding every spring into greens that go from bright to verdant to deep as the days grow longer and then shorter. I’ll never forget driving from Colorado to New Haven, my life’s possession in my car, trying to prepare myself for my new dismal reality far from the Rocky Mountains. Instead, I was enthralled by the rolling hills, the seaside inlets, and the sprawling forests. I’ll still take the Rockies any day, but New England is a legitimate destination for the outdoors.

There are also quite a few human-built attractions. Boston is a singular American destination, one of the few historic downtowns where a 200-year-old house isn’t even worth mentioning. Providence is one of my favorite cities. Burlington is fantastic. Portsmouth, charming. There are museums everywhere. Then there are the adorable small towns that appear every few miles. Whether in Northern Vermont or Coastal Rhode Island, these towns have beautiful central squares and locally-owned shops. There is always a hamlet nearby that makes for a pleasant afternoon. The residential architecture is stunning. I routinely seek out slower, longer routes on local roads to avoid highways. Especially in Connecticut, there are gorgeous properties with centuries-old houses everywhere. Most have been lovingly maintained and kept their original character. Then there are the festivals. Some, like the Maine Lobster Fest, have become famous (and infamous) throughout the country. Others are more local. As someone who grew up going to fairs in Illinois, I’m loathe to admit it, but the Durham Fair in Connecticut takes the blue ribbon.

Then there is the food. So much food. Like seafood? You’ll never want for anything. If you order lobster, be prepared to decide whether you want it the Maine or Connecticut way. Ordering calamari? You’ll likely be asked if you want it traditional or Rhode Island style. There are even two distinct styles of clam chowder. Fish are boiled, charred, baked, fried, and served in anything from salad to macaroni. Oysters are eaten raw or filled with butter and deliciousness and grilled. Clams are put on pizza, which is everywhere. Hundreds of people gather every night to wait to enter legendary pizzerias like Sally’s, Modern, or Pepe’s. New England takes Italian food to the next level - second only to Italy itself. You know what you call a decent Italian restaurant in Providence? Closed. If you ain’t great, you aren’t going to make it.

That made me hungry.

There is more to do in New England than could be accomplished in a lifetime. Even small states like Connecticut have months’ worth of places not just worth seeing, but worth going to see. It’s a great joy to constantly be exploring the area and always having more to visit.

The amenities might be the best thing about New England, but the worst is the gatekeeper to all of them: the prices. New England is expensive. Punishingly expensive. All those amenities exist because people have money to spend. All of the United States has rich people, but the sheer amount of wealth in New York, Boston, and the rest of the coast overwhelms the middle class. I found this out the hard way trying to visit Cape Cod in October of 2019. That should be cheap. It’s offseason for Cape Cod. The tourists have left and moved inland to begin leaf-peeping. Nope. There was nothing available for less than $200 a night. Not even a motel. Now I imagine it’s even worse. There’s no such thing in New England as cheap, off-season deals. Trying to visit places during high season is an exercise in futility. A modest bed and breakfast in a mediocre location during leaf-peeping season in the mountains will set you back $350 a night. Even then, the entire state of Vermont will nearly sell out in late October. There aren’t any deals - or at least I haven’t found them.

Restaurants are delicious but pricey. The rundown Mexican place on the corner won’t be that affordable. Be prepared to bust open the wallet if you want to see a concert or play. And the housing market? I don’t know how families on one income do it. Perhaps the only reasonably priced thing in the Northeast, inexplicably, are the flights.

Rant over.

Another aspect of New England I love is the climate. Illinois and Colorado theoretically have four seasons, but usually, it’s just summer and winter with two weeks that suffer from multi-personality disorder thrown in between the two. New England gets treated each year to a full spring, summer, fall, and winter. Vermont even claims two additional seasons, mud and stick. Not only does New England have four seasons, but all four are generally pleasant. At least along the coast, winters have snow while avoiding deep freezes, and summers have warmth while avoiding severe heat waves. I don’t think there’s been a single day in the last eight years where the daily high wasn’t between 15 and 95 (note that northern VT/NH/ME are much colder in the winter). After growing up outside of Chicago, where the mercury drops below zero and hits triple digits every year, it’s marvelous. Then there are the autumns. All those enormous trees strut their stuff for a few weeks every fall. The air reaches a crispness you can taste. The hillsides pop with color. It’s less endearing as a homeowner because all those leaves have to go somewhere, but it’s beautiful. You can even ride the wave from north to south, doing a weekend (if you can afford it) in October in Vermont and another along the coast in November. The only bummer season is spring, where it rains, rains, rains, and every week it feels like summer is around the corner but isn’t.

Outside of all that, there are a bunch of random idiosyncrasies in New England that are either endearing, annoying, or both. One of the first things I noticed is how to describe going to the ocean. In Florida, you to the beach. In Oregon, the coast. In New England, it’s the shore.

One of the most annoying idiosyncrasies is that New England loves stoplights and hates sidewalks. It is perfectly normal for a low-traffic intersection, which at most warrants a four-way stop, to have a stoplight. Sometimes a single city block will have three. At the same time, the lack of sidewalks makes walking around difficult. I understand that the roads are old, but if there’s enough room for a road, there’s enough room for a sidewalk. As a kid, I found the concept of Shell Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends” to be mind-bending. After all, sidewalks in the Midwest never end. They are always along the street, parallel to the never-ending roads. Silverstein was, understandably, from Chicago, so he based an entire poem around the hypothetical end of a sidewalk. In the northeast, a dead-end sidewalk is as common as a pothole. Sidewalks end everywhere. Sometimes at a corner, other times in the middle of the block. You know how bike paths randomly stop and start on roads throughout the country? That’s how New England approaches sidewalks.

Finally, there are the people.

The stereotype that New Englanders are mean is true. The type of rude person that can’t exist in a Colorado mountain town or Midwestern corn country is present in spades. It comes out most when they are behind the wheel. It isn’t that they are too fast, like in Southern California, or too nice, like in Washington. It’s that they are insane. Every so often I will be in that grey zone between hitting the gas or the brake to make it through one of the ubiquitous traffic light. Now that I’ve been here a while, I usually hit the gas. I’ll enter the intersection just before the light turns red, head on a swivel making sure I’m not about to get in an accident. And then, safely through, I’ll look in the rearview mirror to make sure there isn’t a cop behind. There never is. Instead, the car that was behind me is still there, having clearly run the red. Sometimes, there will be another car behind that one. I’ve also found out what happens when I decide to be a more cautious driver and come to a safe stop before the light turns red. If the driver behind me isn’t a fan of that approach, he (it’s always a he), will dart into the oncoming lane of traffic and go through the red light. The first time this happened, I almost called the police. Now it’s just something I expect to happen. Don’t even get me started on drivers not capable of taking their turn at four-way stops. Also, why are there so many PT Cruisers here? The last one rolled off the assembly line fourteen years ago. Yet I still see them on a monthly basis. New England is where PT Cruisers go to die.

So yes, people out here can be mean. I’ve heard multiple people talking about my wife or me and explain a behavior that I view as common courtesy, but is apparently commendable, by saying, “Oh yeah, they are from the Midwest.” Speaking of the Midwest, I’ll always have a chip on my shoulder when I meet a New Englander who has toured Europe and the Caribbean but has never been to the Central time zone. See your own country! Although given the cheap flights, I do get it.

That said, as Chimamanda Adichie states in her great TED talk, the problem with a single story, in this case New England rudeness, isn’t that it’s wrong. It’s that it’s incomplete.

The part that gets left out about New Englanders is the drive. People here are focused. They are movers and shakers. People here are grinders. They work hard and want to be the best at what they do. It doesn’t matter if they are a doctor or a locksmith. They plan to make a mark on their world. And they are interesting. It is seldom that I meet a boring person. People travel the world, have interesting hobbies, and kick ass. They are clever and funny and witty and good at telling stories. I have met literally hundreds of people in the New Haven area that I would have dinner and drinks with in a heartbeat. It’s incredible to be in a room with people who build apartment complexes, clerk for Federal judges, and are professors at Yale. I know there are people who do that everywhere (well, maybe not the Yale part), but the ethos here is one of purpose. People in New England work hard and play hard. They spent every waking hour meeting a deadline, and then hop in the car and ski all weekend in Vermont or rent a bus and go with a bunch of friends on a winery tour. If you want to make something of yourself and be around others trying to do the same, New England is the place to be. It’s the people that make it so.

After eight years I can’t claim to fully understand the Northeast. There’s a lot I don’t know. Much of the New England countryside is still a mystery. I do know, however, that there will be plenty to do, good food to eat, and people worth talking to.