Idahoan experience reshapes axiom of people

By Matthew Boyle | mboyle@flagler.edu

Idaho’s air smelled fresh and looked clean too. The smog I grew up with in the Northeast was gone. A view of pristine, snow-capped mountains surrounded me on each side in the distance and everywhere I went there were well-kept city and community parks.

One thing I was sure Idaho would have wasn’t there, though. I thought there were supposed to be potato farmers and rednecks everywhere but there weren’t. The people in Idaho weren’t that much different than the people in Massachusetts.

My friends went to school, did their homework and worked part-time jobs at supermarkets and fast-food joints. They went to the movies and to house parties to have fun on the weekends.

My friends’ parents worked in offices and went out to nice restaurants. Most of them went to college.

After my junior year of high school, my dad took a job in Boise, Idaho. It was the first time in my nearly 18 years of existence that we moved. I had lived in the same house in Canton, Massachusetts for my entire life.

My new house was huge. Real estate was much less expensive in Idaho than in Massachusetts. In my house in Canton, we had three bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms. In my new house, we had five bedrooms and three full bathrooms.

The new kitchen sparkled with freshly polished granite counters and the fancy cabinetry made my mom happy. I especially liked the under-cabinet lighting.

John, my new house’s builder, would come by every once in a while to fix anything that wasn’t working properly. Because my parents bought the house brand new, we got this “special” treatment.

John was a local. He was born and raised in Idaho. I asked him how many potato farms were in the area around our new neighborhood and he said there weren’t any. I was surprised.

My friends in Canton told me there were going to be redneck farmers everywhere. So did my family in Massachusetts. But there weren’t any redneck farmers near me. The people were the same.

I worked at a supermarket in one of Boise’s suburbs, Eagle, Idaho. My job was to stock the shelves for the stuff that sold fast like milk, bottled water, store-brand soda, eggs, dairy products and bread. For the time period leading up to Thanksgiving, I was responsible for keeping the stuffing, gravy and canned vegetable shelves full. During that pre-holiday sales rush, the citizens of Eagle bought frozen turkeys from the store’s meat department and bags of potatoes from the produce department.

Contrary to what I had thought beforehand, apparently the people in Idaho didn’t grow their own potatoes or raise their own turkeys. The Idahoans bought their potatoes, turkeys and vegetables at the store just like the people in Massachusetts.

After I made a few friends at my new high school, Mountain View High School in Meridian, Idaho, I accepted an informal invite to a party on a Friday night. I didn’t want to drive, so my friend picked me up. He wasn’t driving a beat up red pickup truck. He was driving a little red sport car.

We pulled up to the party in his fiery red Mitsubishi Eclipse with the convertible top down. The music was blaring but he wasn’t playing country music. We were listening to Dr. Dre.

The people inside sported American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch polo shirts. They wore Adidas and Nike sneakers and rocked Lucky and Tommy Hilfiger jeans. They weren’t wearing overalls, leather boots or flannel button-down shirts. No one was donning a cowboy hat.

I thought I was flying into Redneckville USA. Instead, I discovered that people everywhere are pretty much the same.