Conference quark::mennotes-v1

    My experience is different. Men walking alone in the woods or else
    where I meet generally give me a comfortable greeting. If I'm
    carrying a gun greetings are even more often friendly and comfortable.
    Perhaps that's because shooting is so easily identifiable as
    a common interest in my neck of the woods.

    Men walking alone with a women are less gregarious. I suspect it's 
    because a man walking alone with a woman wants to be alone with the
    women and that's why they're out walking.

    ~Cliff

    I vote for it being a NE trait.  What's scary is how easy it is to
    contract the habit.  (,< :)
    
    In Boston and Cambridge, it might be a hangover from the drivers'
    dread of eye contact.  But I've noticed it in NH too.
    
    Ray

Yes, Denny, I experience the same thing.  When I came back from a San 
Francisco vacation in '84, I decided that I liked how friendly people 
were out there and that I would make more of an attempt to meet 
people's eyes and be friendly.  The friendliness is not returned out 
here (Boston or Nashua, NH).  

And men are less friendly than women.  Whereas the women tend to just 
not notice me sometimes, the men most definitely notice, look nervous, 
and then look away.

I think the situation that (is it Cliff?) describes is one in which 
the men already have a common bond: hunting.  I have felt the same way 
in the locker room and on the basketball court.  People who give me a 
friendly hello on the court revert to "no eye contact" when I see them 
in work.

Sometimes saying hello to another man can be like pulling teeth.  
However, I'm pleased to report that once I do catch their eyes and say 
hello, they are usually friendly, if not a bit shocked that some 
stranger actually said hello to them.



						--Ger

    I grew up in California, then spent the last 20 years living in Texas. 
    I have lived in many places from Florida to Calif.  In virtually ALL of
    those places, people are friendlier than here in MA.  At least on first
    contact.
    
    Just this past weekend, I was out walking around town with my wife, who
    is a native New Englander.  As we passed people, I did what comes
    naturally...I said "Hello" or "Howdy" or just "hi" to them.  My wife
    even observed: "did you see her FLINCH!  Like you scared her...she
    didn't know what to DO!" after I merely said "hello" to a woman passing
    us. 
    
    Now, if I'd been alone (I am a large man) I could understand an
    unescorted woman perhaps being "alert"... but, I was strolling along,
    (sort of lumbering, my wife says) holding her hand, engaged in
    conversation, when all this happened.  It happened THREE times on
    Saturday alone.
    
    I have often come to New England on business (before moving here) and
    have always felt New Englanders were "stand-offish", and sometimes hard
    to get to know.  But, once you get to know them, they are friendly just
    like everywhere else.
    
    Never, never felt like this anywhere else.  In fact, many places in
    Texas and Calif. it's almost a race to see who greets whom FIRST!
    
    TONY

    Hi,
    
    I'm a native New Englander now living in the San Francisco area
    (8 years).  I've definately found people to be much friendlier
    here than there  -in terms of greetings on the street, general
    approachability, etc.  However, it also seems that people in New
    Englander form firmer longer-term friendships in New England. i.e.
    here people seem to have "skiing friends" and "beach friends" and
    "shopping friends" etc.  -lot's of activity based friendships. 
    Whereas, growing up in New England it seemed like most adult
    friendships were built on activities like simple visiting from
    house to house, drinking coffee, maybe playing cards, etc.  
    
    I apologize if this is getting off the topic a bit  -I guess the
    original slant of this note was really the differences between men's
    and women's responses to meeting on the street....
    
    Anyway, just a thought...
    
    Lynn
      

    
    	RE .5
    
    	Lynn, I agree with you on this. I lived all of my life here
    	in New England, except for two and half years (79-81) in
    	New Mexico. I found the folks out there go out of their way
    	to meet you, but let one bad thing happen or you need their
    	help for something and they run like crazy. Here in New 
    	England, it may take you years to get to know someone, but
    	I've found they will be the first ones by your side when
    	something bad happens/you need help.
    
    	I got divorced in New Mexico, the second word got out, not
    	a single neighbor on the whole damn street with even so much
    	as say "hi" to me or my ex. After living there two years
    	they suddenly didn't know us anymore. Yet when we moved there
    	we weren't even there a total of twenty minutes when every
    	person on the street was atour house.
    
    	G_B

        I think I might have some ideas as to why friendships seem to be
    different between the east and west.  I think that people tend to stay
    in one place back east than they do here.  I think it applies from
    where people live to where they work.  Here its not uncommon to try to
    get a house (when one can get one) that can be improved so that another
    more expensive house can be purchased.  In the Silicon Valley the
    average employment time of a worker is at or under two years.
    
        Its possible that there are more activity oriented friendships out
    here because activities are more stable than where one is employed or
    where one lives.
    
    Tony

    three more observations to further muddy the waters....
    
    1) L.A. is not a particularly friendly town, and one aspect of it is that
    women rarely make eye contact with me walking down the street. San
    Francisco is different in that regard, and so is New York City, in
    that casual eye contact happens quite frequently, despite the
    miserable reputation that New York has. Male eye contact happens in
    all cities.
    
    2) Small cities or more rural areas tend to be friendlier than large
    cities.
    
    3) The expression on my face often influences the reaction I get from
    strangers. If I'm smiling, people smile back. Sometimes people are
    simply reserved, not unfriendly.
    
    -roger
    

If you want to meet your neighbors in New England, you need to get out on
the weekend and do yard work.  

Then you can take long breaks to saunter over to the driveway or across 
the street or whatever to discuss lawn mowers, fertilizers, insect 
repellants, leaf-raking techniques, and isn't the weather beautiful/lousy 
for this time of year.  (This step may be supplemented by wintertime 
discussions of snowblowers.)

Next summer you can offer a beer, soda (what I used to call  'pop'), or 
lemonade, and sit in the shade and talk about speed traps and where to 
buy fertilizers or lawn mowers. 

The year after that, you might be invited over to play some one-on-one,
or half-court, depending on how many neighbors you have and how friendly 
they are, after the lawn's done.  

If things go exceptionally well, next summer will progress to shared 
barbecues.  But don't be surprised if it takes another two or three 
years to go beyond the beer and basketball.

This procedure applies to both men and women, as near as I can tell, but 
children have a different set of rules.  If your child becomes friends with
a neighbor's child, these rules are partially suspended.

--bonnie

    re: .9: In the fifth year you get invited to use the pool ONCE.  If
    there were no undue contaminations attributable to you and yours and
    you neither spit nor cleared your nose in the pool you get invited back
    the next year.  If your kids peed in the pool, your back to talking
    about fertilizer and leaf-raking.
    
    :-)
    
    ed

    .9
    
     Humorous, and just a little bit over-exaggerated. :-)
    
     The Doctah

    
    	RE: .11
    
    	Doc, How is it over-exaggerated? Do you mean it takes
    	longer than stated?  :^)
    
    	G_B

    re. .12 yeah.... Doctah MUST mean that ACTUALLY it DOES take longer
    than as illustrated in the earlier note.  If anything happens such as
    making excessive noise (as I did once) then you can be back to getting
    around to talking after mowing the lawn.  Kids DO suspect the rules.
    I have actually SEEN kids get to know the neighbor kids the SAME day
    as moving into the neighborhood.  Wouldn't it be nice if adults had
    some of the same rules as the kids?  I have lived in N.E. all my life
    and my impression is that essentially it takes YEARS to get to know
    the neighbors, (sort of know them that is).   Jeff

    Its not unusual (at least in N.E.) at all... but I do think that we
    miss out on alot of positive experiences as a result.  I hear that
    on the West Coast one gets to know people VERY easily... but they
    tend to move away often, or drop the relationship if the slightest
    thing goes wrong.  That is the sterotype which I, as an Easterner
    have of the West Coast.   N.E. = Long and slow.   W. Coast = easy
    come easy go.  Is my sterotype of the W. Coast as accurate as the
    sterotype of N. England?    Jeff

    
    People who own houses here probably have experiences not too different
    from yours. 
    
    However, I know few people who own houses, and my experience with
    apartment dwelling was that you could live in a building for
    years without ever knowing your neighbors names because they rotate 
    through too fast. 
    
    There is little sense of community in places where there is little
    or no stake for the tenants. Thats one good reason to encourage 
    home ownership...
    

    I've lived my whole life in New England. I STILL don't understand this
    stereotype of being "cold and standoffish."  Why *should* I say hello
    to a perfect stranger? If I did that, I would be implying I wanted to
    get to know them.  If I want to get to know a neighbor or new person
    at work I just go over and introduce myself and that is that.  I think
    Yankees get a bad rap based on what other parts of the country say
    about us (especially transplants).  I think people in the northeast
    are more sincere and trustworthy, and have much less to prove than
    in other parts of the country.

    420.17 -
    
    Exactly.
    
    (: >,)

    Well, I'm a native New Englander, and I have always been a little
    shocked when someone I didn't know, would say hello to me.  I think
    it stems from being taught that you simply did not speak to someone
    unless/until you had been introduced to them.  Thru the years, though
    I've come to think that I've missed the opportunity to know some
    very nice people, so I've worked deligently to overcome my reticence,
    and just introduce myself to people.  Of course, I would only do
    this given a common interest, e.g. work together, sports...
    
    And, I'm always a little surprised, when people think that 
    neighbors=friends!  Just because you live on the same street, 
    it seems rather foolish to assume that you might have anything 
    else in common.  In my last residence, I lived there for over 7 years, 
    I said hello if I saw the neighbors out in the yard, and I was inside 
    their house once, on the occasion of the death of a member of the
    family. Now, these people were very nice people, but we didn't really 
    have anything else in common. 
    
    I do think that NEnglanders maintain long lasting friendships, I've
    one friend for over 35 years, and the funny thing is, we were neighbors
    as children!  I guess, after have written this reply and thinking
    about it, we are a somewhat odd lot! :-)  I'm quite surprised by
    those people who can accept friends just coming in and going out
    of their life.
    
    SandieD

    
    re the generalization about NEasterners being more trustworthy..
    
    Pure unadulterated jive!
    
    I've met plenty of reptiles in NE... 
    

    In the 28 house development I live in, we have an annual block party- 
    bar-b-que around Labor Day. Usually has 50-60 people in attendance. I 
    live in NH and most of these people are just an occasional hello-type
    of relationships the rest of the year. At least half of them are not
    native New Englanders though.
    
    Ref some earlier replies. What ever happened to plain neighborliness of
    days gone by? Are we all in our private shells so deep that we don't
    dare come out? If that's how far we've "progressed", the world is in a
    sorry state.
    
    Eric

RE:< Note 420.21 by NSSG::FEINSMITH "I'm the NRA" >


       
   > Ref some earlier replies. What ever happened to plain neighborliness of
   > days gone by? Are we all in our private shells so deep that we don't
   > dare come out? If that's how far we've "progressed", the world is in a
   > sorry state.
    
    
Interesting question and one that troubles me from time to time. I've lived in
an apartment complex (4 buildings with ~30 apts in each) for a little over 
a year now.  I have no idea what the people living on either side of me look
like.  I exchange occasional hellos, how are ya's etc with folks across the
hall, but that's about it.  Sometimes I want to just go knock on their doors
and introduce myself, but I haven't yet.  Why not? good question.



Jim

    Neighborhoods like the kind we grew up in rarely exist.  Most people
    don't stay in the same house for 20 years anymore.  Drive along ANY
    suburban street these days and every other house is up for sale.  Why
    bother getting to know your neighbor if they aren't going to be there
    next year?  More couples work, kids are in daycare.  On weekends who
    feels like getting to know the neighbors when you're trying to get to
    know your kids.  I'm not saying it is a better life, I'd much rather
    prefer the neighborhood I grew up in as a kid when you could stay out
    until dusk and your parents didn't have a heart attack worrying if you
    were abducted or in trouble.
    
    The media reports so much negative news about kooks out there that the
    meaning of a neighborhood today is much different than yesterday.

    It used to be people in a community relied upon one another for
    everyday needs.  The communities were MUCH smaller for the most
    part and as a result ones' daily routines put you in touch with these
    people.  Although people in our community' today do supply our needs
    (the man at the 7 Eleven) etc. there is something about the pace of
    life an anoymitity that keeps us apart.  I think that technology, the
    pace of life, and the population explosion have all combined to create
    the isolated little worlds most of us live in.  We are not isolated in
    an information sense (quite the opposite), in fact.  We are isolated
    in the sense that except for a small circle of friends, family, and
    SOME people at work everyone else almost might as well not exist for 
    most of us.  People are for the most part isolated and somewhat afraid.
    I think the price of technology has in a human sense been enormous.
    Maybe I am missing something here but when people live in an apartment
    building literally inches away from one another and they don't even
    know their neighbors names and this condition is accepted as normal
    by people I think it speaks for the tremendous emotional walls we have
    built around ourselves.  As far as I know these walls are not unique
    to New England.   Jeff

    My first home was in a block of flats. It was tucked around the back of
    the main street. I hardly knew any of my neighbours, except just before
    I moved out - then I briefly saw one neighbour who'd just moved in.
    
    In my new house, I've gotten to know the neighbours on one side very
    well. They're always popping around to chat, or to ask if we'd look
    after their cat, whatever. We invited them to our BBQ's, parties etc.
    
    On the other side, is a house that's standing empty. It's been for sale
    for the last year - the housing market in England (Old England!) having
    crashed, new owners haven't arrived yet...
    
    Pete.

    When I lived in upstate NY, we had a good way of telling "country folk"
    from "city folk" by the way they would walk from their house to a
    neighbors. If they went down the driveway, used the street, up the
    neighbors driveway, they were city bred. If they took the shortest
    route which was usually across the grass, they were country. Usually
    proved accurate.
    
    Eric