"Country"

[alchemistdoctor]

I grew up in Colorado, where "being in the country" meant being in wilderness. Nobody for miles. Or, if your house was in the country, it meant you had to drive for a half hour to an hour away from all the other houses in order to get there. Land.

Country music made no sense to me, because A) nobody in the country I knew talked like that and B) there were always lyrics that said stuff like "I'm going to the mall to show off my tractor" or some shit, and there were no Malls in the country.

Now that I am on the East Coast, though? It makes so much sense. Country here is an aesthetic, not a real thing. I had a friend who grew up considering herself country. She grew up in Allentown. Like, Allentown is big, y'all.

On the East Coast if you don't live in the Major Cities (here in PA that would be Philly and Pittsburgh) then you're country. Even if you're in a big-ass town, you're country. And now the music makes allll the sense. Here, they'd call my sort of country "the wilderness."

I miss wilderness, but hey! At least country makes sense now.

Comments

[alexcat]

Oh the country exists and pretty much like the music... there are many rural areas in the east that are real country with farmers and tractors and the whole mindset. And country people live in those vast non-towns of the east and southeast and even into the midwest.

[out_there]

It's interesting how the definition changes around your comparisons. I think of my town as an overgrown country town, but it's a regional city. Sure, it's only 5% of the population of the city, but a tiny city of hundreds of thousands of people is a whole lot different to a country town with a pub, a petrol station and a general store.