There's bound to be culture shock moving from one part of the country to another. Going from Minnesota, home of 'Minnesota Nice' and an extreme version of the midwest, to the east coast, only an hours drive from the nation's capital, was pretty jarring for my wife and me. After more than seven years we've mostly grown used to what goes into living in Maryland, and now the adjustment the other way is going to be difficult again in certain ways. Life is funny.
Before leaving I thought it'd be fun to attempt to qualify what it means to be a Marylander. It may be anecdotal but the best way I see to do this is to point out some of the aspects that stick out to me about living here. This is hopefully an interesting exercise not only for my friends who live elsewhere, but also those we've made here. So I'll give it a try, though I'm sure to forget a few things. Please comment and let me know what I missed, I'd love to update and add to this post later.
Before getting started, I need to include a reference everyone my generation knows.
So is that it? We'll come back to 'crabcakes and football.'
I'd say one of the most distinctive pieces of being a Marylander is a love for the state flag. Granted, most state flags are pretty bland. See for example Minnesota's, which has the state seal on a solid blue background. Maryland's is not boring, and while at first I thought it was an eyesore, I've slowly come around to like it. It helps that the history is pretty cool. Adopted officially in 1904, it's the heraldic banner of arms for the 2nd Lord Baltimore, who lived in the 17th century and established the province, later state, of Maryland in 1632 in large part to be a refuge for English Roman Catholics fleeing persecution at home (for more, check out the English Civil War for starters). The black and gold portion is the Baltimore family (his father's) banner, and the white and red is that of his grandmother, of the English Crossland family. Interestingly, during the Civil War pro-Union Marylanders flew the Baltimore banner and those in favor of the Confederacy flew the Crossland banner. Eventually the combination of the two came to represent the healing and reunification of the state in the decades following the conflict. Today you see the flag everywhere, like on clothing (including UMD jerseys) as well as on car stickers where it's typically combined with the shape of something else the patron wants to proudly represent.
Seafood is most definitely a big part of living in Maryland. And though crabcakes are big, it seems to me that whole crabs, especially Chesapeake blue crabs, are even more prominent. These are the most commonly seen Maryland flag shape on cars. It's a whole experience to go sit down somewhere at a table covered in brown paper and navigate your way through a dozen or so crabs with hammers and crackers and forks. You aren't even full by the end, but you are tired from picking the small bits of meat out of the shell and your taste buds are shot by all the Old Bay. You can't forget Old Bay, that's as much a part of this as the seafood itself. No one in Maryland is without a giant container of the stuff, us included, and they absolutely dump the Old Bay on top of crabs anywhere you go out for them. Every restaurant has crab dip, and there's frequently crab pizza too. If you really want to check out something weird, try a soft shell crab. Though there's plenty of other kinds of seafood around here, crabs are surely synonymous with Maryland.
Maryland, or more specifically Baltimore, also has it's own distinctive type of barbecue: pit beef. A type of roast beef prepared on a charcoal grill, it's typically thinly sliced and served as a sandwich with various sauce styles, including the more typical sweet/smoky BBQ or horseradish ('Tiger'). You'll see it at a ton of restaurants in Baltimore and elsewhere in Maryland. I could compare it to Arby's, because that's not wrong, but it's so much better. I won't forget visiting the original Chaps on the east side before they started opening franchises, including one in Frederick. For whatever reason the food at that old hole-in-the-wall just seemed a tiny bit better. Even if other states have better barbecue overall, Maryland deserves some respect for this alone.
In sports, I've noticed Maryland is a hotbed for lacrosse and swimming, way more than I believe is the case in Minnesota. I knew before moving here that Johns Hopkins University (in Baltimore) was a lacrosse powerhouse and has a huge rivalry with Maryland, but the sport is popular all the way down to the lower levels and now we've seen that firsthand, in our community and even with our neighbors. I didn't know about the swim culture in the state, including at the clubs around DC, until meeting and befriending some swimmers. But it's hard to argue with recent results, as the state has produced Olympic champions like Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky and Chase Kalisz.
Other things that've been very apparent to me may not be the most unique to Maryland, but they are certainly different from the upper Midwest and deserve mentioning. So much of the population in this part of the country is not native here. Due to government (including military) and contractor jobs, centering around DC, people have come from all over the country, and world, and pretty regularly don't stay long. To me all the transience especially stands out since the vast majority people in Minnesota are from there and don't want to leave. Next, during the summer everyone is about the 'salt life,' and yes I talked about this briefly in writing about Rehoboth Beach. A few people spend time during the hotter months in the mountains, at places like Deep Creek Lake, but more seem to like going to the ocean, whether it's in OCMD, in Delaware, or maybe New Jersey, Virginia, or the Outer Banks. When they're not at the beach I will never understand how people can handle the humidity here, it's something I'll never complain about in Minnesota ever again. And, yeah, I'll always associate a certain type of bad and self-absorbed driving with the mid-Atlantic and Maryland in particular, but I will say at least people in the DMV don't have to wear those bumper guards that are common in NY/NJ (seriously what's up with that?). On the other side of that coin, I will definitely miss cruising the windy, up-and-down country routes and seeing all the old towns and buildings that pre-dated our modern-day, wider roadways.
The last one I'll mention for now is how greetings are often done here. Pretty regularly when I come across people, out for walks or in stores or wherever really, they'll say 'How ya doing?' or maybe 'How are you?' It took me a while to realize that this is simply another way of saying hello. No one in Maryland is looking for an answer and a return question. It took even longer to teach myself to only say hi in response and move on. This is one example where the adjustment back to living in Minnesota may be difficult.
Like I said, I'm sure there's so much more I'm forgetting. Hopefully this was still fun anyway. Maryland is a lot more than crabcakes and football, the way I've seen it.
How did I forget about all the Under Armour apparel?
Definitely a Maryland thing.
I liked this post a lot. I grew up in NoVa and lived most of my life there except the past 18. I‘m slowly embracing Md as home. Recently Darcie and I got to visit with some friends on the Md eastern shore. We got to go boating and at crabs under a picnic pavilion at the marina not more than 20 feet from the bay. Totally a md thing to do.
btw, most Md crab houses use J.O. #2 spice rather than Old Bay.
Just published this and already feel like I need to add something about life around the Chesapeake, for one