After graduation from East Stroudsburg University in 1961, I remained in Monroe County, where I taught high school and worked part-time on the local radio station.

I learned very quickly that there was a love-hate relationship between native Monroe County residents and out-of-state vacationers, especially those from the New York City area and northern New Jersey.

I will never forget the comment made to me by a prominent Stroudsburg businessman: “We love their money, but that’s where the love stops.”

And that dislike intensified as more and more of these residents started buying homes and converting their second seasonal places into full-time residences. They were trying to escape to the “country” and flee suffocating taxes, the high cost of living and some of the other unpleasantness of city life.

Between 1960 when I was in college at ESU and 2010, the population of Monroe County exploded from 39,000 to more than 169,000, or 328%.

The county grew by 53% between 1970 and 1980, 38% between 1980 and 1990, and by 45% between 1990 and 2000 before leveling off to a more modest gain of 22% between 2000 and 2010. During much of this time, the county’s population showed the second highest percentage of growth in the state, next only to adjoining Pike County, which also was getting an influx of residents from the metropolitan New York City and New Jersey areas.

Then, all of a sudden, when the Great Recession of 2008-09 hit, the growth stopped. Between 2010 and now, the population has stagnated, growing an estimated 0.3% between 2010 and 2019.

There are still an estimated 20,000 Pocono commuters who work in the New York City and northern New Jersey areas. Gov. Tom Wolf has asked anyone coming from these areas to Pennsylvania to self-quarantine for 14 days because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these commuters, especially those in critical jobs, say they have no alternative except to go back and forth to their jobs daily.

On top of this, some furloughed city residents have gone to the Poconos and are staying in short-term rentals to ride out the worst of the pandemic. Wolf put a stop to that last week by shutting down this rental business for the time being. Others are hunkering down in their second homes.

So why is there this disdain for these out-of-state residents who have contributed so much to the region’s economy?

The main reasons I have heard involve snarled traffic, environmental concerns, choked services, especially during the summer tourist season, crime and a perceived elitism.

When I was news director for WVPO (now WSBG) in Stroudsburg, I was shocked when George Hallet, chairman of the Stroud Township Board of Supervisors, said at a public meeting, “These damn New Yorkers think they’re better than us. They think we’re hayseeds.”

Perhaps the feeling is mutual. A New York City resident, who goes by “Lugger,” wrote just last week on social media in response to Wolf’s banning of short-term rentals: “They are slower in Pennsylvania. It’s almost like a southern state, laid back and filled with rednecks.”

In addition, now Pocono residents fear that these visitors will bring the contagion with them from the number one hot spot in the country and use limited medical resources in the region. Critics point to this recent influx in explaining in large measure why Monroe has the highest infection and death rate per capita in Pennsylvania.

For obvious reasons, tourist organizations such as the Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau (formerly known as the Pocono Mountains Vacation Bureau) don’t do studies on why residents dislike the influx of “city people,” as some Monroe natives classify them. They focus almost exclusively on the economic impact these visitors and new residents have had on the four-county Pocono region (Monroe, Pike, Carbon and Wayne counties).

After spending the first 53 years of my life as a Pennsylvania resident - 33 of them in Monroe County - I became publisher of the daily newspaper in Oswego, New York, where I quickly learned another startling fact: “Upstate” New York residents resent New York City, too.

They feel the city gets way too much attention and financial help at the expense of the rest of the state. That feeling was reinforced last week when Gov. Andrew Cuomo empowered the National Guard to round up badly needed ventilators and other critically needed medical supplies for New York City from hospitals and private organizations around the state to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

The feeling in Oswego County was so intense while I was publisher that our state legislator, Assemblywoman Frances Sullivan, introduced a bill that would permit the rest of New York state to become the 51st state by seceding, leaving New York City as a state unto itself. Of course, no one took the bill seriously, even though it got nationwide attention, and it died in committee.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com