Why Are Bostonians So Brusque?

(Photo by William B. Plowman/Getty Images)

BOSTON, MA (WBZ-AM) -- Sometimes I’ll be chatting with someone who moved here from somewhere else, and they’ll ask me – why are greater Bostonians sometimes so…brusque?

OK, sometimes they use other adjectives, but this is a family radio station.

Often, these are folks from a more temperate climate, and to them I offer the telltale evidence of the early spring of 2018, and ask: who wouldn’t be brusque living in weather like this? 

Between that atrocious Patriots Day, the two February-style days since, and now today’s arrival of cold rain mixed with snow, even native New Englanders would surely agree this is the pits.

But what about Midwesterners, they often ask? Their weather is, if anything, worse than ours, but they’re so…nice.

On the surface, that’s true.

Then again, if you’ve ever been to a sports event in Chicago, you know that stereotype only goes so far.

And the truth is, there are other things about living around here that help make us prickly, in our uniquely lovable way.

Can any Midwestern city, with the possible exception of Chicago, match our wretched traffic and bad drivers? It’s all straight and flat out there, not like the cowpaths we drive on.

And while not too many of us farm for a living anymore, we don’t enjoy that lush, fertile farmland they have out West. Our soil is so rocky, we have to build stone walls everywhere just to have someplace to put them.

Don’t get me started on our politicians, although the rest of the country does seem to have its share of duds.

So to sum up, out-of-towners, we have our reasons for being a tad surly.

And if you don’t like it?

You can take it down the road and dump it, right next to that big stone wall.

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. Listen to his previous podcasts on iHeartRadio. 

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