Capt. Don's Retirement

Capt. Don's Retirement

Thursday, April 9, 2015

I’m A Westerner




No, I don’t think that I am a cowboy, but rather that I was born and raised in the western part of the USA and feel most at home here.


Map Western USA
It’s not as though I have not experienced other parts of our country. I have lived in both the Mid-West (Nebraska) and New England and travelled extensively in all other areas.
Here are some of the things that come to mind that differs the west from other parts of our country.
* Wide open spaces with mountains often in the distant view. We have plains and deserts, low humidity and, compared with eastern, southern and mid-western states, few insects.
* Although regional accents are diminishing, people in the west talk like me. Folks elsewhere speak differently.
* Our cities are new and less crowded and the buildings are modern and bright.
* People here look fitter than in the Mid-West, East and South and we smoke a lot less.
* When I go to a sporting event here, I support the local team. There are always a lot of newer arrivals who come out to cheer for their old home team from wherever they came. Some make themselves difficult to like.
* People here tend to move about more than the rest of the country and, regrettably, generations often live far apart.
* In much of the west, Mexico and its culture is a constant presence.
* Descendants of European emigrants do not live in ethnic neighborhoods here.
* In my opinion St Louis is the western most of the eastern cities and Kansas City is the eastern most of the western cities.
* My daughter lives in Massachusetts and I enjoy visiting her often, but New England is half way between here and Europe in more ways than distance.
* The West, being newer certainly doesn’t have as much history and perhaps as not much culture as elsewhere.
Summing up, we are a little different here and it feels like home.
Boulder, Colorado March 28, 2014.

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