Gil Dobie wrote:UNI88 wrote:
I don't see why Mapleton (or Van Meter for that matter) can't be both a distinctive town and part of a larger metropolitan area. I live in a village that was founded in 1883 and is more than 50 miles from downtown Chicago yet when I'm traveling and people ask where I'm from I tell them Chicago.
I don't think I'd ever heard of Mapleton before these discussions (and my family lived in the Fargo area before I was born and my cousins grew up there so it's not like I had no exposure to the area) and I'll probably never hear about it again. Saying someone from Mapleton is from Fargo helps to give people on a national discussion board a better idea about the location.
The story actually said she was from Mapleton. I grew up with over 1 million people within 100 miles of my house. when people ask me where I'm from, I say a small town on the Canadian border. I've never said Grand Forks or Winnipeg. I've never heard anyone say Bob Feller was from Des Moines. I've heard people say a small town West of Des Moines. Maybe it's different for your family or people in your area.
Most of the people who live in my village don't work here. They work in various places throughout the metropolitan area and that's one of the things that ties the area together. I would guess that a lot of people in Mapleton work in Fargo, Moorhead or other suburbs. So while Mapleton is a distinct town, it's also part of Fargo/Moorhead.
The Chicago metropolitan area is also larger than the Fargo, Grand Forks or Winnipeg metropolitan areas so it's possible to be 50+ miles away and still be a part of the metro area (as evidenced by the commuter rail service to downtown Chicago). I don't think you can make the same argument for Pembina or nearby.
Different people help identify where they're from in different ways. I ran into a family a couple of weeks ago who told me they were from north of St. Louis so asked for more specifics. They told me they were from the tri-state area which is where I'm from so I pressed some more. They said Keokuk, Iowa and asked if I knew where that was so I said yes, I grew up there. At which point they said they lived in Hamilton, Illinois. Now Hamilton is a distinct town but it's just across the Mississippi River from Keokuk and a lot of people who live there work in and around Keokuk. They used Keokuk as a reference because while it's still a small town it's bigger and better known than Hamilton (
All Roads Led To Keokuk).
Realistically, I think we're slipped into a TomAto/TomAHto discussion.
