Something I noticed since moving from Maryland to Central PA a few years ago is that, very generally speaking and noting there are of course exceptions, people in Maryland (believe it or not even in Baltimore) tend to be a bit more polite and friendly than what I find here.
I notice it most while driving.
For example, I’m driving through a parking lot and stop (as I should) for pedestrians or stop when I see someone trying back out of a parking space. In MD, not always but more often than not, the pedestrian or other driver would acknowledge with a smile and little hand wave. Here in PA when I do the same thing, if the pedestrian or other driver even bothers to look at me, I rarely get the thank you smile or wave, in fact I sometimes feel like they are giving me a dirty look as in “how dare you be driving in my parking lot”.
When I lived in Baltimore the street I lived on was one way but the street I had to go down to get to my street was two-way but narrow enough with parked cars that two cars couldn’t pass each other unless one pulled over where no car was parked. More often than not, there was a sort of courtesy rule that was followed where as if you were closest to a place where you could pull over to let the other car pass, you would and the other driver nearly always gave a smile and a hand wave as they passed. Here in PA, there is a similar street I drive down on my way to work and more often than not when I pull over to let another car coming from the opposite direction pass, I don’t get any sort of acknowledgement, to the point I find it very rude.
It’s just a general observation and granted, I came across plenty of rude people in MD but on a whole it just feels a bit different up here. For instance, I’ve had more men; white and black, young and old hold a door open for me in MD than in PA. When I moved into a townhouse in Bel Air MD, several of my neighbors came over to say hello and introduce themselves, the older retired couple next door even took me out for dinner. I’ve lived in the same development here in PA for over two years now and don’t know anyone by name, and except for my neighbors downstairs who will say hello if they see me in the parking lot, nobody else even says hello to each other.
When I was a little kid we moved from Harrisburg PA where my mom grew up to MD, and I remember my mother being offended by what she considered the “over familiarity” of people in Baltimore. She thought it was rude that complete strangers would strike up conversations or ask what she thought were too “personal” questions, something like being at the checkout line at the grocery store where someone in line would comment about the pot roast she was buying and say something like “so how do you make your pot roast…my husband loves pot roast but I can’t seem to make it right…does your husband like pot roast…what about your kids, how many kids do you have?” I’m sure they weren’t trying to be rude or intrusive but just making what they thought was polite conversation.
She also thought it was terrible that kids called adults by their first names such as “Miss Linda” or “Mr. John” instead of Mr. or Mrs. Smith or referred to her has “Hon” :) .
There is IMO a perceptible difference North and South of the Mason Dixon line, although I will also say that having lived in Maryland and in the Baltimore area most of my life, I did notice a bit of a change in terms of friendliness and politeness over the years. And I will also say that having family in New Jersey shore area, I find a lot of Jerseyites friendly, abrupt perhaps but not unfriendly per se. The rudest places I’ve been to in my life so far; Philadelphia and Boston. The friendliest: South Carolina and Toronto Canada.
There is still a strong rural and Southern sentiment among people in most of Maryland, outside of Montgomery and PG Counties. For one thing, blacks and whites get along much better outside of those counties. People move and talk more slowly. They’re polite because their mamas taught them to be polite and would spank them with a wooden spoon or a switch (your choice) if they didn’t.
I think it was the French-American author Olivier Bernier, writing about early American history, who pointed out that in early, small-town America, you had to behave yourself because if you didn’t, you’d be ostracized, and there was nowhere to go. If you were a creep, everybody in a small town would know it. We have the freedom of anonymity with no need to govern our reactions in large cities and with a highly mobile culture.