I went to graduate school in southwest Virginia, an hour from the West Virginia border, in that small triangular part of the state. My roommate was from New Jersey, born and bred, and while I grew up in New York, I now live in Connecticut. We are both metro-NY people, really.
She was much more freaked out than I by the slow and friendly manner of the people we met there, grinding her teeth at how long it took us to check out, say, at the grocery store, because the cashier was chatting us up. My favorite story happened one Friday afternoon. My roommate was in her car, stopped at a red light, music and air conditioning both blasting when she heard a knock at her window. The daughter of a protective Italian father and an equally-protective boyfriend (who was a cop), she immediately bristled. The woman at her window made the universal "roll down your window" hand gesture. My roommate suspiciously let her electric window open about an inch. "Excuse me, honey," the woman said to her, in that country drawl folks down there have. "But that light is green." She pointed to the traffic light my roommate wasn't paying attention to. Then she went back to her own car. My roommate got through the intersection. And the Good Samaritan, who must have found honking her horn too unfriendly, was once again caught as it changed to red, so much time had passed.
