OK Blind baby...Since ya asked specifically....
Let's start with education.
All the kids (I'm talking eighth graders here) that ride my bus have at one time asked me where I'm from (natch-I don't sound like I'm from around here), When I tell them-I'd say about 9/10ths of them can't for the life of them tell me even remotely where Connecticut is-much less which way is northeast. Not only that, they could care less. It ain't Alabama-I guess they figure they don't need to know it.
One kid upon seeing the weight limit sign on a bridge I was crossing asked me which weighs more, a ton or a pound? He was serious.
I see the school papers that middle school kids leave on the floor or the seats. It's obvious that they have no real grasp of their own language. TEACHERS mis-correct spellings on their work-I've seen it with my own eyes the teacher's comments on a student's paper where he had written a sentence "The snow fell." She (the teacher) had corrected it from "The snow fell." to "The snow fill" and left the student a note on the paper to practice spelling the word correctly.
(The fill-fell merger f#%kup.)
A TEACHER, mind you, who should know better.
When I attended J.W. Powell school back in the 70s, my fourth grade teacher taught me that the words "pin" and "pen" were homonyms. Words that sounded the same but were spelled differently and had different meanings (pin-pen merger). Ditto with the "tin-ten" merger.
I had a lotta catching up to do when I arrived in the Ridgefield, CT schools from here back in 1977. I was WAY behind.
My daughter is still in that school system in Connecticut and could speak in three languages (Spanish/German/Mandarin Chinese) by the time she was a sophomore in high school.
She was one of the ones I mentioned who participated in online class with her peers in Japan.
From what I've observed-many high school kids here have enough trouble with their native tongue.
There- grade schools are state-of-the-art and crammed with high-tech learning tools. They can afford 'em. Gambling isn't a sin there. The state lottery makes sure that schools don't have to beg for money anymore like they still do here. The couple casinos that are there contribute to the state's coffers as well.
Now let's move on to stuff like laws and policy...
F'rinstance, Here you can operate a motor vehicle without actually having insurance. Until you can't show proof to a cop. Oh yeah.
The insurance companies don't report to the Department of Motor Vehicles here when somebody's coverage lapses because there ISN'T a Department of Motor Vehicles.
You can't even register a vehicle of any kind where I'm from without first providing proof of insurance. They look it up on their computers and it's either go or no go.
Here the lady at the county tag office just asks ya if you have it. No proof required.
THEY TAKE YOUR WORD FOR IT. Up north, a cop runs your tag right there in his cruiser and it comes back to him whether or not you have insurance. Right then and there.
Vehicle standards: I know why cars are so darned expensive (and deadly) here. There's no safety inspection. At all. Civilized states require it....
Vehicle emissions standards: If Alabama ever instituted an emissions testing program-half the cars in the state would suddenly be off the road. Everywhere else that has one-you can't even register a car until it passes at least minimally.
First thing any redneck here worth his stuff does with his truck is chop the catalytic converter off it and hock it for meth or beer money (muffler, too! Who needs it!?) and install twice pipes. Nevermind the big grey cloud of unburnt fuel or oil smoke behind it. On any given day the little valley I live in has a haze similar to the one over Mexico City in it. In short-A third world country's air quality.
There's an abundance of ambulance chasing lawyers here it seems by watching the CW channel on TV. Hmm...Wonder why? Could it be because driver education sucks here? I dunno. Could be.
When I was transferring my CDL to Alabama at the trooper's office in Muscle Shoals-I was watching the folks testing for their drivers' licenses. I like to watch people, y'know?
While I was waiting for the apparently nineteenth century laminating machine to finish cooking my new license, I happen to notice this great whacking big overall-sportin', six-toothed bumpkin of about 17 years old come out from the testing area and announce to maw and paw that he'd passed the exam-just barely. His words in between cackles were "I got five wrong-but I don't care!"
Great....Now one day I'm prolly gonna hafta dodge the flaming, tumbling wreckage when "Junior" goes careening off the overpass I'm traveling under because he doesn't have the sense to hang up the dang cellphone or use a turn signal when changing lanes.....Just ducky.
Reading some of the threads regarding traffic controls here on this forum-I see people asking questions of LEOs or explaining their versions of how they think traffic rules work.
Don't they teach this stuff in driver's ed? Isn't it on the test somewhere? Everywhere I've ever been it sure is. Has been forever. Apparently not here, by cracky. Not by the sound of things.
Smoking: No big deal everywhere else. I haven't been able to smoke inside a building in 30 years up north. I was amazed when I got down here again and everybody was puffing away inside
(Hey! Dontcha know that s#!t'll ki ll ya!?)
Funny how the whole smoking inside ban JUST STARTED here what? Last year? The year before? Uh-huh. 30 years behind the times, I says.
Uh-huh. People still look at me funny when I get up and go outside to smoke. Even when I don't have to. 30 years up there I had to smoke outside. It's a built-in habit to go outside now.
It's a brandy-new problem for folks here. Yup. Change is haaaaarrrrrrd.
The guy who reads my electric meter pulls in my driveway in his truck with the preacher station blaring and whips out a pair of opera glasses and tries to read my meter. Only twice in almost two years has he actually gotten the numbers right. He mistakes a 3 for an 8 or such sh#t.
I call Florence utilities to straighten it out and nobody answers the phone during business hours.
I go down there in person. Nobody can find my account. I wait for a supervisor to finish her two-hour biscuit break or whatever and haggle with her for half a day before they finally realize a mistake has been made.
Same with the ninety year old woman who struggles to read my water meter. She dang near fell in the hole wrasslin' with that big iron thing they open it with.
Overcharged me by ten thousand gallons three times in the last 18 months.
Same crap to deal with fixing it. I guess whoever runs the waterworks only comes in to work when they're not too busy being the police chief or the local magistrate or the proprietor of the local junk-a-torium. What's with all the junk shops around here anyways? Oh well...They don't hafta worry about anybody stealing any of it. Nobody steals it prolly for the same reason nobody buys it.
Good ol' Mayberry. Yup. Where I'm from-the meter readers scan your meters by radio as they drive by and the information is sent directly to the home office computers in an instant. Kinda like the Zonar units we pre-trip our buses with. All they have to do is aim and push a button. Go figure.
Up in the northeast-you might see three or four churches in any town. Some even less.
Here-They're on EVERY CORNER. Lotta sinners here by the looks of it... I'm surprised that they don't have a drive-up window for fried chicken, biscuits and a blessing, too.
Up there, a preacher is just that. A preacher. Few take him really seriously.
Here, they're like village wise men. So it seems. And EVERYBODY'S either a preacher or a used to be preacher. They dictate laws and public policy....and the sheeple follow blindly for the most part.
Nope. Very few superstitious folks up there-and the ones that are pretty much keep it to themselves...well except for the jehovahs and the mormons...They're pretty much universally PITAs.
In short-We yankees aren't afraid of jesus. In fact, for much of the early part of my life-I actually thought that jesus' middle and last names were "-effing christ."
Helmet laws truly suck. I wonder just who the hell thought that one up.
I never rode a bike with a helmet in the few decades I've ridden until I got here and hadda put the lid on. never once did I actually need to wear one in all that time. 25 or 30 years ago the bikers in CT rode their bikes up and down the steps of the state capital for a few days until the lawmakers got the idea and repealed the lid law for anybody 18 and older and started educating motorists and riders better instead. Helmets don't save lives. Educating dumb people does.
Every skin-crayon I've seen or heard about in this state that died on a bike was wearing a lid.
If I wanted to, I could walk into a convenience store up north and buy a girly mag-hardcore even. No problem. It's got a plain brown wrapper around it so as not to offend anybody. Can't do that here. Preachers won't allow it. Same with adult videos, or toys or anything else of that ilk. The religious nutbags don't think I have the self-control not to get overexcited and go rape somebody or some such s#!t. (In fact-that kinda stuff-like violent video games actually provides an outlet for people so they DON'T tend to get in situations where they'd commit crimes or immoral acts....Hmmm....Mebbe we yanks don't hafta spend so much time in church because we're not SINNING OUR ASSES OFF as much as southerners. Hmmm...?)
I can buy booze at the grocery store. The hard stuff. Not here. It's a sin and the state has to have absolute control over it because apparently we don't have any self control (and they make money off the sales).
Cops....
Y'all got so MANY kinds of cops down here. Now I realize that there's a whole lotta area to cover and a whole lotta sinners to wrangle, but back home-Sheriffs are just a vestigial force. Mainly for serving court papers and summonses, etc. While they CAN enforce the laws, they're usually not needed to. Local police handle all of that and staties pretty much stick to the interstate highways and rural areas.
Listening to the scanner regularly, I can see why ya need so many kinds of cops on so many different levels.
It's like listening to the wild west of the 1800s. People shooting the crap outta each other cause they got drunk and got into a pizzing match. Domestics out the wazoo. Is it so hard to just walk away when your spouse says something ya don't like? It worked pretty good for me anytime that happened. I get the impression that a lotta southern guys still consider their wives chattel.
How ancient. Oh well. It's biblical, I'll give 'em that much.
We've evolved past that for the most part where I'm from. Oh it still happens now and again cause asshats will be asshats, but one visit from the local fuzz and a goodly beatdown usually ensures that they won't hafta come back. In a domestic situation there-SOMEBODY is going to jail. Always.
None of this "oh yeah, them again....I'm responding code 3 again" crap. Besides-a lotta relationships in hamlets like Ridgefield, CT are more like business arraingements. Lotsa money tied up in 'em. No need to beat each other up when it goes bad. Just take 'em to divorce court and sue the bejesus outta 'em.
Funny too how high the divorce rate is down here. You can get a $300 uncontested quickie special. Hmm....If yer spouse runs off and ya can't find 'em ya can run a legal notice in the paper for a specified minimum amount of time and poof! Divorced.
(That's kinda neat, actually.) But unnecessary where I'm from.
The bank not far from where I Iive was advertising "FREE CHECKING!" on it's sign the other day.
Like that's something new? OK mebbe here, but up nawth every bank BETTER have free checking or they prolly wouldn't have any customers. It's a given for the last 25 or so years.
Just recently in the TD, I read that schools are finally getting around to the bullying issue.
That is so 1980s.
The attitudes of whites toward blacks I've noticed is still kinda Jim Crow-ish here.
We got lotsa black people up north, too-we just don't really think of 'em as any different than us crackas. Not down here, by gum...Nosirree. Oh sure, there's a goodly number of enlightened white folks down here and I'm cool with that, but I wish I had a nickel for every white person who's said something racist under their breath in casual conversation regarding blacks.
I've only been back here two years nearly and I'd already have a sock fulla nickels.
Same with homosexuals. They wanna get married-I say let 'em. Let 'em have the whole experience-good, bad, or ugly just like the rest of us. They aren't bothering anybody and we aren't scared of 'em.
I lived right here in Florence back in the early-mid 70s.
When I came back in 2009 one of the things that struck me was that Alabama seemed to be a state that was permanantly mired in 1965 and still struggling desperately to come to grips with 1985. Nothing has changed except that the goobers are yapping on high-end cell phones while they're weaving down the road and chucking beer cans and McDonalds crap into my front yard.
That crap-Most of this crap that goes on here has either been evolved past, outlawed or is just no longer socially acceptable where I'm from anymore.
Anybody doubts what I'm sayin'-Go look up "Ridgefield, Connecticut" and mebbe follow some links. Look at some pictures. No junk cars in the yards, no decrepit houses, very VERY few grossly obese people...And lately all the corrupt politicians have been fired some years ago.
We even got g ay bars all over the place up there. No big deal.
Like I said-Most of us elsewhere have evolved past that.
Need I go on?
Holla back if u fillin me aight? Peace.
/shrug