Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but I love New York, and like Boston a lot, as well. I don’t want to live in either place, but they are great places to visit. On a couple of visits to NYC, I had the good fortune to have a connection where I could stay in Brooklyn Heights and walk the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. I haven’t been to Boston in a long while, but the North End had some great Italian restaurants when I was there.

But, like I said, no desire to live in either place. As far as I am concerned, Heartland is homeland.

Not that it matters, but I lived in NYC and Boston for about 20 years.

Being from the heartland, it was always trying to hear those urbanites speak so critically and arrogantly about American cultures, including mine, or places, including mine, about which they were clueless but thoroughly opinionated.

Or wondered if — yes, I heard it — there were there lights and running water and indoor plumbing back from where I came. Shoes? Inbreeding?

Me, I was advantaged by having a shorter right leg than the left, so I always told them I got it by walking one way around hills. Humored them. Confirmed suspicions.

And, you bet, being from what once was western Virginia, though that changed during the Civil War, I heard hundreds of times: “How close do you live to Richmond?” I usually asked if they ever studied American history or U.S. geography in the 8th grade.

But I adapted. Traded car for bicycle, buses and subways. And learned about new foods and wines and music and dance and art and people, even the professions I had to put money in pocket and bank — and life — in ways I could never have in the heartland.

Living in New York City, even Boston, was like being on another planet.

But, always my heart leapt when I saw the Blue Ridge and Alleghenies, from the air or by car, when I came back. I never forgot where I came from.

And always, it pained me to go back to all that concrete, glass, asphalt and all those attitudinal people in such a hurry. Actually, I became such attitudinal person, something I had to unlearn.

Heartland, though, Jay?

The Gray Lady can’t even spell it, much less find it. And, really, though, they don’t want to know.

Just as, it seems, neither does the new American Fascist Coalition, the gaggle of Demockacrats, liberals and fascists who demean all of us who differ from and with them. And who don’t seem to live east of the Hudson or west of Nevada. Or live in the Windy City or Beantown.

Oh yeah, we’re onto to you to Oprah b***h.

Maybe I should say ” It’s so danged funny it made the RC Cola come out of my nose.” Come on Jay, stop trying to act like you were raised on side meat and turnip greens. True, that might have been on your menu once in a while, but so was paella, coq au vin, brie and a nice bottle of wine.

And fess up. Were you that young lawyer with the quick trigger finger?