I read this morning that 26.9 inches of snow fell on Central Park in New York yesterday. Personally, I find it kind of neat that downstate got to experience a typical Upstate N.Y. winter storm. New Yorkers are tough and they’ll handle it just fine, but I’m sure they’re probably a little shocked from the amount of snow that fell. It’s the most snow that’s fallen since the late 19th century. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times that we’ve had that sort of snow up here.
It’s funny to think that New York is in the same state that we live in. (By the way, I refuse to refer to New York, N.Y. as “New York City”, it’s not the “City of New York City”, it’s the “City of New York”, unlike Oklahoma City which is the “City of Oklahoma City”.) It’s so different down there. They speak differently, the pace of life is much faster, politically the regions favor opposite ends of the scale and what is taken for granted down there (taxicabs and knishes, for example) are very scarce up here. I’ve often wondered why New York and Long Island aren’t in their own state. I’m not trying to kick them out of the Empire State or anything (they’d take most of the population with them!) but let’s face it, there’s not much in common between a person in Maspeth (Queens) and Cheektowaga, N.Y. (outside of Buffalo). Well, they do have some things in common; high taxes, decaying roads and a state government strangling itself with red tape.
When we visit people in other parts of the country and they find out we live in New York (the state), we often are asked about the twin towers being hit (“Did you see it?” “Yes, on television just like you, we live four hours away”) and sometimes we are asked if we’ve been mugged recently. (I’ve been chased by a cow on several occasions, if that counts for anything.)
I sometimes wonder if the same situation exists in Illinois, with Chicago at one end of the spectrum and Carbondale, Ill. at the other. Do they have the same differences though they live in the same state?
