My wife and I were boarding the Staten Island Ferry our last time. We were going home the next day after visiting friends on the island.

“Just a minute,” a lanky gentleman said as we pulled our luggage into the waiting area of the ferry terminal. “We have all of these jihadists running around, you know.” His dog sniffed our suitcases.

“Where are you from?” the man asked.

“Georgia,” I said.

“Oh, really,” he said. “This dog’s from Tennessee.”

Wow! What a coincidence, I thought to myself. That dog and I have something in common.

“He’s part coon dog,” the man continued. “I didn’t even know what a coon dog was until I met this one.”

We sat down to wait on the ferry. A couple of minutes later, the man walked over and asked: “By the way, what do you do with a coon when you get one?”

I told him that some people actually eat raccoons, but I don’t. I don’t hunt them, either. “Most coon hunters,” I said, “just enjoy the thrill of the hunt. They like to hear the dogs howl in the woods.”

I didn’t bother to explain that a good coon dog will bay when he trails a coon and bay more enthusiastically when he trees one. I didn’t want him to know that I knew that much about coon dogs. Just because that hound and I are both from the South doesn’t mean we enjoy the same things. I wear shoes, and I don’t eat from a bowl on the floor.

I also don’t wear a beach bucket on my head to stand out from the other tourists hoping that Al Roker, NBC’s friendly weatherman, will speak to them during one of the Today show’s weather breaks. I was wearing a baseball cap from the Dawson News & Advertiser, but no yellow bucket turned upside-down like two women from New Jersey.

If you’d told me I’d be standing outside NBC’s studios at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City with dozens of TV groupies, I would have told you that I am a newspaper guy, thank you, and I will not lower myself to that level. But my wife wanted to go.

If you had told me I would pay $11 to fax two pages to Georgia and $5.50 to print out two airline boarding passes, I would’ve said you’re crazy. But I did. And I paid $15 for a sandwich.

I’ve been to New York several times, but I almost forget over time how different Manhattan is. I almost forget that I sound different up there, that everything costs more, that crowds are everywhere. I almost forget about the rush to do everything. It’s different on Staten Island. Prices are cheaper, and the pace is slower. We enjoyed it all.

Even on the island, though, I didn’t quite fit in. Frankly, my most comfortable moment came when I found out that a suitcase-sniffing coon dog of questionable ancestry was from Tennessee.

Phil Hudgins, a former community newspaper editor, can be reached at phudgins@cninewspapersinc.com.