Up until a few years ago I spent my professional life crawling all over this country. I’ve been in all 50 states and although I’m a biased, born-and-bred Westerner there’s much I also like about the East.

But I must say, the geography and the people are as different as Al Sharpton and Trevor Brazile. The two regions probably ought to be two separate countries. I’m not lumping the South in with the East because we’re all aware of their feuds. (On second thought, maybe we ought to be three different countries.)

Although Easterners and Westerners are of the same genus we are two separate species. The East is skyscrapers and Disneyworld, while the West is suburbs and Disneyland. The West has disasters like earthquakes, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and the East has hurricanes, Obama and the Kennedys.

Westerners gamble in Las Vegas with their banks’ money while their Eastern brethren gamble on Wall Street and in D.C. with your money.

Westerners get duded up in Carhartt jackets, Wranglers and cowboy hats, while in the East it’s penny loafers, deck shoes and neckties. There it’s bare feet, here it’s boots (maybe because we have more rattlesnakes).

The East has the Atlanta Falcons, Orioles, Blue Jays, Eagles, Ravens and Penguins, while the West has Seattle’s Seahawks and Anaheim’s Ducks. The West has mountain lions, wolves and grizzlies, while the East has Congresspeople, alligators and bureaucrats. I don’t know which is worse.

The West is Border Collies; the East is Shih Tzus and Portuguese Water Dogs. The West has rodeo, the East has yachting. The East is New York toll roads, the West is Oklahoma turnpikes.

In the West we have auction barns, while the East has auction houses. The center of our liberalism is San Francisco, and in the East it’s the Village. The West is Friday night football, the East is Broadway. We fly-fish, they ice-fish.

The West has the Alamo and Custer, while the East has Gettysburg and Arling-ton. The West is the raw frontier while the East is civilized gentility. Easterners stamp their feet to New Orleans, the Grand Ole Opry and Graceland, but Westerners have Merle Haggard, cowboy music, the Austin sound and the National Poets gathering in Elko.

The West is bytes, bits, Silicon Valley, Cupertino and Redmond, while the East is Silicon Alley, Pittsburg steel mills and shuttered textile factories. The West is cowboys, Indians, Santa Fe, Cow Town, the OKC stockyards, lassos, lariats and Billings. The East is Amish, flat saddles and Lancaster.

The West is sagebrush and mesquite, while the East is kudzu and Kentucky bluegrass.

The East is D.C., the Kentucky Horse Park, Niagara Falls, Boston’s Freedom Trail, leaf season, maple syrup, the Statue of Liberty, Williamsburg, Ford’s Theatre and the Smithsonian. The West is the Redwoods, Bryce, Zion, Craters of the Moon, Old Faithful, the Grand Tetons, Carlsbad, bison, the Badlands and Black Hills, Mt. Rushmore, Wall Drug, Death Valley, Hoover Dam and Mounts McKinley and Whitney.

While the East is home to the Halls of Fame of baseball, football and basketball, the West has the Cowboy Hall of Fame ... and we wouldn’t trade them straight across.

The West has Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier Park, Big Bend country and the Grand Canyon. The East has the Great Lakes and Adirondacks. Rich Westerners congregate at the Yellowstone Club, Aspen, Vail, Jackson and Palm Springs, while their counterparts in the East have mansions in Cape Cod, Nantucket and Palm Beach. They send their kids to Ivy League schools, while in the West it’s Stanford and Texas A&M.

The West has too little water and the East has too little space. The West is home to Chinatown, Watts, South Central and the barrio, while the East is home to Selma, Hell’s Kitchen, exiled Cubans and Jewish synagogues. The East is Jewish delis while the West is Mama’s Mexican Food.

The West is the frontier while the East is the old country. The East is West Point while the West is gateway to the Far East. The West is West and the East is East – and, as they say, never the twain shall meet.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers may log on to www.LeePittsbooks.com to order any of Lee Pitts’ books. Those with questions or comments for Lee may write to him in care of this publication.