This weekend, I flew to Warwick, R.I. to attend my 15-year high school reunion. For this blog to make sense, you should know that I lived in the Ocean State for five years, to the day, between 1987 and 1992. Born in Milwaukee, my family moved to R.I. when I was 13; I stayed on the East Coast for college, then moved back to Milwaukee in 1996.
I went solo to the event, opting against bringing my wife, who would know perhaps two people at the party. (It's not that I didn't want to prove to people that the kid with braces, big glasses and "A Flock of Seagulls" hair married a beautiful wife -- rather I'd like to show her where I lived during a less stressful, more laid-back trip).
So, for the first time, I sought to pay enough attention to my surroundings that I could properly explain what it's like living in this tiny state. It's been five years since my last trip (and just my fourth or fifth in 15 years), so I finally had enough distance, I thought, to view the weekend with an objective eye.
Arriving Thursday night, the first thing I noticed, of course, was the accent. When really strong, picture how a New Yorker would sound -- after he's been punched in the mouth. It's not just different pronunciation -- it's the syntax, colloquialisms and entirely different words that we're used to in Milwaukee.
Above and beyond the obvious dropping of R's, Rhode Islanders drop G's, too ("shopping" becomes "shoppin"). They also use adjectives like "wicked," "retarded," and "queer" with reckless abandon, as they did when I got there in '87. The concept of "PC" language doesn't resonate even with educated, enlightened people like it does here -- which isn't to say these people are homophobes or insensitive, because the majority are not (full disclosure: I found myself slipping these words back into my vocabularly within just a few hours at the "bah").
They call purses handbags. Subs are grinders. Milkshakes are cabinets. Cream for coffee is called creamer, though you wouldn't need that, since when you order a "regular" coffee, it already comes with cream and sugar. There are more subtle differences -- honestly, I can't remember every one of the 20 instances in which I found myself thinking, "Funny that they say this word instead of that word."
Unlike the first time around, I didn't find the accent particularly offensive -- it was even a little endearing -- but when it was particularly strong, it made the person speaking sound especially ridiculous. At the nice restaurant in East Greenwich Friday night, for example, I could barely keep from laughing when the waiter kept asking if we wanted any "peppuh" on our salads.
However, it doesn't sound a whole lot more foolish than talking to someone with a really strong Midwestern accent. My only observation is that the Milwaukee accent, at its worst, sounds naïve but inviting, while the strong R.I. dialect sounds more thuggish and crude.
The other huge difference took me several days to wrap my head around. The layout of the whole state, which has the population of Metro Milwaukee and a geographic size not much larger, is convoluted, squiggly and seemingly random. Unlike the grid of streets in the City of Milwaukee, driving around Warwick -- Rhode Island's second largest city (of a total of eight) -- is like a maze.
It sort of resembles the curvy streets of River Hills or Elm Grove, but unlike those Milwaukee suburbs, you'll find commercial real estate sprinkled in all over the place. So dotted along one of these curvy tree-lined streets with a stone fence running parallel to it is a Dunkin Donuts (which are everywhere), a CVS (from Woonsocket, R.I.) or a Del's Frozen Lemonade (more on that later).
Eventually, I figured out why the lay of the land is so different, and it comes down to one huge factor: age. Rhode Island was settled in 1636, some 200 hundred years before Milwaukee. Metro Milwaukee's grid-like layout came into being 150 years ago, and lots has been torn down and rebuilt several times. But demolishing a 300-year home for a strip mall or surface parking lot doesn't happen at the drop of a hat in New England, and the founding fathers weren't worrying much about car traffic and building straight roads while fighting the American Revolution.
Admittedly, downtown Providence has added a gigantic mall in the last decade. But unlike Milwaukee, where old photos of Downtown look barely like the modern version, a lot in R.I. stayed intact. So other than an area between Warwick and Cranston that looks a whole lot like Bluemound Rd. in Brookfield, from my perspective, the state's infrastructure hasn't changed much from 1992, and probably a lot earlier.
Which is why walking and driving around had a "Twilight Zone" effect on me. I knew where I was at all times. The physical landmarks looked almost exactly the same, leaving me to focus on the intangible differences between Milwaukee and Rhode Island.
For example, I knew on an intellectual level how many Italians lived in Rhode Island, but not until I saw the homogeneity did I realize that people simply looked differently than they do back at home. I saw maybe three African-Americans during my four days there (other than at a wedding on the same grounds as the reunion), and while my friends insist the area is becoming more diverse, I didn't witness it in my whirlwind tour.
The cost of living in Rhode Island, and on the entire East Coast, is drastically higher than in Milwaukee. Friends pointed out two homes in two neighborhoods that had just sold for $300,000. The first house was a modest ranch in a neighborhood right next to the airport. If I had to compare the area, I'd say it looked like a bit like parts of Cudahy. That house, I'd imagine, would sell for about $120,000 here, at most. The second house is located in a more desirable neighborhood for Rhode Islanders, maybe like parts of our Glendale. That house would be considered a "fixer upper," and could perhaps fetch $150,000 here.
When we complain about increasing prices of real estate, we must remember just how good we have it in Brew City.
Other stuff felt just as different.
I also witnessed what Rhode Islanders think of their big-city neighbor just to the north. For them, Boston is a great place to visit. They root for their sports teams, look forward to seeing The Police play at Fenway Park, and basically hold none of the contempt that Milwaukee shows toward Chicago.
But as the weekend rolled on, I began to realize that Milwaukee and Rhode Island have similarities, too.
I watched the local news on Friday night, which starts at 11 p.m., since it's in the Eastern Time Zone. You'll be happy to know that the quality is just as bad as Milwaukee's product, maybe even worse.
We each have our own local eccentricities. While Milwaukee has a tavern on every corner, Rhode Island has a Dunkin Donuts or a Del's. This Del's that I speak of is the official state beverage, and it's the single biggest thing I miss about living there. It's a slushy, sweet lemonade that you drink without a straw or a spoon. A franchise lived in Milwaukee for a very short time in the mid '90s, but it's no longer here. I drank four in the time I was there, and had I been given the chance, I would've had four more.
Some of the weird Milwaukee colloquialisms also are present in Rhode Island. Inexplicably, they too say "bubbler," "soda" and "over by."
In case you're wondering, the reunion itself, which was held all the way across the state in Smithfield (which took a whopping 15 minutes to drive to), went pretty well. Most people asked me the standard questions that I heard when I moved there in 1987: Do you miss the ocean? Is it cold there? Why are you living in Milwaukee?
But a handful of people I talked to had been to Brew City, usually for business, and they all really liked it. A few guys talked to me about the Brewers, wishing us luck and commenting on J.J. Hardy and Prince Fielder. Universally, everyone was surprised that I flew all the way out there for a little reunion of about 75 people.
What I left with was a sense of zen that I never had while living there. Saturday morning, someone asked me at breakfast what I missed about Rhode Island. My standard answer to that has always been "Del's and Newport."
But now that I can look back, not through the eyes of a Midwestern teenager dropped into a life 1,000 miles from home, I can say that this crazy place represents a fond place in my memory. Full of old friends and nice experiences.
I, like many people who left Milwaukee, made the conscious decision to come home. But leaving made me appreciate Milwaukee much more -- and my five years in Warwick opened my eyes to a different place with different people -- not to mention tangibles and intangibles that were totally unique and still are unforgettable.
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
