Of smiles. And strangers.

As my mother is from Yonkers and my father from Long Island, I am not used to friendly strangers. I know all about the "You talkin' ta Me?" guido with the pinky ring and more hair than is quite natural. I understand him. I see him coming and promptly look at the ground, in case my heel gets stuck in a grate. Or, more likely, I trip over something.

So it was strange to me when I got up here to discover that people say hello to strangers on the sidewalk. Of course, the towns up here are so small that no one really stays a stranger for long, and odds are good that you will bump into someone you know every time you go to the gas station. Because you know there's only one or two in each town.

Nor to people lock their doors - of either houses or cars. My landlord's fiancee never locks her house door. And when the two of them go to Florida for the winter, she leaves her car unlocked, with the keys inside! I lock my car when I'm running into Stewart's for ice cream. And there's no one else in the parking lot.

But here, they trust each other. In fact, they have no reason not to - the only crime up here is drunk driving. And drug smuggling.

I live next door to a bait shop, run by a really nice guy. He rents out the apartment above the shop to fishermen - or anglers, as some prefer to be known. There are these two guys from the Bronx - or maybe Brooklyn, I can't remember - and they are like fish out of water up here, if you'll forgive the pun. But they come up a few times a year. They've already been here twice since I moved in. One morning, I was hanging out outside on the communal patio furniture, and one of them came out to throw some trash away. I decided to take the leap into north country culture and said hello. And like any normal southern new yorker, he looked askance at me and muttered "hi" while looking into the trash can as if he expected to find buried treasure. Later, when I actually met him, I called him out on it and he was properly embarrassed. Quite funny. But I didn't blame him.

My neighbor downstairs, however, simply does not understand their reticence. This is the woman who bakes every week for friends and neighbors, even though she and her boyfriend both hate sweets. She is going to buy pumpkins, hay bales, and corn stalks to decorate our little communal patio area for Halloween, her favorite holiday. She loves people, says hi to everyone who walks by and constantly tries to set me up with her son. But I digress. We were sitting outside one afternoon and got to talking about the Bronx/Brooklyn guys and she just didn't understand that where they're from, you simply don't talk to strangers. I tried to explain it to her - we just inherently don't trust other people. She looked at me like I was crazy. I just laughed and told her she's been living up here too long.