I am now thankfully at the tail end of a trip from hell through New England -- and no, it was not because of the godawful BoSawx fans now popping up like bowling pins amidst the dark clouds of Calvinist doom that perpetrate the primordial landscape.
It's for another goddamn good reason, as they say in Beantown. It because I'm allergic to New England.
My father and uncles and aunts were bred and buttered in Danbury, Connecticut, AKA the Hat City. I went to a small Catholic prep school in New Milford, Connecticut; went to college in Boston and stayed on in local newspapers for a total of nine years; then spent fifteen years more in the friendly confines of Burlington, Vermont. Most of my life, adult and otherwise, has been in New England.
In all of this time, in all of these years, not once did I ever get allergic to anything ever. In the last week we've been to Boston, Danbury, New Milford, Burlington, and back to Boston and I am so allergic to some as yet undefined thing I don't think I'm ever coming back.
[Insert snort, sneeze and wheeze here.]
Not that I really wanted to come this way in the first place. As I once said to my Mom: "Mom, if this is Brooklyn, you can have it." As far as I'm concerned, Mom, you can have New England. It's not only small but small-minded. It's not only crowded but a place where people think they can cow you by being louder than a Braintree banshee. And you have to stay up two hours later to watch the West Coast games. How stupid is that?
I can't wait to get back to Denver, Aspen, and the West -- the wide open spaces and really cool place, the wildlife, the rivers, the mountains, the light. I won't be allergic to anything once I get off the plane at DIA.
As for New England, a strong allergy medication might help but secession is always an option. Maybe this is a gift, a semi-perfect excuse never to come back to this freakin' wasteland ever again.
Who needs New England? Even the Pilgrims could see it for what it is now.