One Exotic Hayseed

As new and different as the Los Angeles area is to me, so I am to it.  Evidently, there is a Wisconsin accent.  I say that relatively facetiously, as I tend to wallow in mine when I can, like when I'm talking to other Midwesterners at Church: "Hey, I 'ope yer Vikings do real good tuh-day!  Yah, I 'ope dey lose wid' dignity."

Yeah, I said it...

Yeah, I meant it...

The most ridiculous highlight of my journey, thus far, that involved the Wisconsin accent came at the first Packers preseason game that I watched after my arrival.  I was at a table with my friends Chris and Jessie, both of whom come from the Dairy State and have been living in the Los Angeles area for some time.  As we were sitting there, the accent issue arose in conversation.  Evidently, the rest of the world has a way of saying the word "bag" that is entirely alien to the Wisconsin tongue.

"How do they say it?" I asked.

"Well," Chris said, "It's like... baahg."  Unsatisfied with his attempt, the professional actor and student of regional dialects confided, "I don't know, I still can't say it."

Jessie tried: "Behg, I think-- No, that's not it either..."

"Baahg?"  I asked.

And soon, all three of us were simultaneously droning the word "bag" over and over in this empty bar, with the only non-Wisconsinite at the table pounding her fist and demanding: "BAG!  Just say 'BAG!'"

Around the natives, though, I try to tone the accent down.  I thought that this would be a breeze before relocating, as the most difficult to pronounce place name in the surrounding area appeared to be Cudahy.  Yes, as in Cudahy meat-packing.  With the befitting smugness that comes with having mastered the new language of Californian, I moved into my new neighborhood.  "Where are you from?"  I was asked just yesterday.  "Why, ma'am," I replied, "I'm from none other than the fine city of Alhambra."  The woman with whom I was speaking paused and glared at me with a crooked smile.

"Ok, I meant where are you originally from?  Because," she explained, "you are not from Alhambra."  As in ham-- the food.  My city, the one that I've lived in for over a month, I still can't say it right.

I also stick out a touch because of being a blonde-haired blue-eyed minority.  In Wisconsin, for nine months out of the year, I was Caucasian.  During Winter, for the other three months, I was fluorescent.  Since I've been here, I've picked up a pretty ferocious tan and my hair has bleached, bringing me to look a little less determinable.  These conditions are further complicated by the amount of melting that has occurred in this particular corner of the melting pot.  There are people that I meet who are a little Japanese, a little Mexican, a little German, and so forth.  The conversations that led me to finding out about these ethnic bouquets typically began when these people look at my blonde-lobster complexion, which had been further exasperated by dimmed lights in a restaurant or bar, and ask me: "So, what's your ethnicity?"  I would cordially explain.  Then comes my favorite part, when they respond, "Guess what I am!  Go on, guess!"

Will I use my exotic Sconnie powers for good or for evil?  I still don't know.  For the time-being, I'm just focusing on finding out all that I can about, well-- here.  And to do so, I'm blending in better than I could have imagined.  Quietly, almost accidentally, I've already been slowly woven into the outer-fringes of different social webs.  It's something of an honor to me that in such a little while, during perhaps the most reclusive single month of my life (due to the big, nasty job-hunt), I've come across people that remember my first name and shake my hand.  In a gracious act of selflessness, the hulking monstrosity that is Los Angeles seems to have offered itself to me, a stranger... from a strange, far-away land.