trees.
As I remember it, the Washington suburbs didnât get expensiveuntil the Reagan years. During his presidency, money exploded into towns that had been shabby, somnolent, often little more than two gas pumps, a Baptist church, and a post office. Suddenly every backwater had a foreign car dealership, a gourmet grocery, and a colonial-style brick bank. Malls erupted. Office parks moved into Rockville; the computer industry swarmed up around the Beltway. Across the Potomac, Roslyn of the pale green willow trees disappeared beneath a wilderness of skyscrapers. Jaguars and Mercedeses backed up along Sagamore Road, twisting out past the defunct amusement park by the river. If my father had remained a real estate broker, we could have been rich. Little houses became big ones, while big houses became mansions, and the bigger the houses got, the less their inhabitants seemed to know about the people who lived near them. Until finally what you had were âresidential areas,â places where someone could be murdered on the next block and you wouldnât know who he was.
Nowadays our old neighborhood is settled mostly with young lawyers, a few systems analysts, maybe a lobbyist or two, maybe a retired two-star general. Twenty years ago mostly low-level government workers lived there, GS 3s and 4s, along with a few insurance adjusters, pharmacists, and small-business owners. They drove Chevrolets and dented Ford station wagons. They kept bowling trophies on the mantel in the paneled den and invited their neighbors over for iced tea and mixed nuts while their kids played skidoo in the rumpusroom. Even though it was rumored that the brick Defense facility behind the mall was really the presidentâs secret underground bunker, where he would be hidden away during a nuclear war while the rest of us melted, none of our neighbors seemed particularly nervous about the future.
Their politics were desultory and middle-of-the-road. Most of them had voted for Nixon; they had also voted for Kennedy two terms before. For them, as for the rest of the country, Kennedy had been a romantic choice. Nixon seemed more pragmatic. It was there in the flat ring of his voice, the way he said, âMy fellow Am
ari
cans.â The times demanded pragmatism. There were the Soviets to consider, the Chinese, the student protests, the war in Vietnam. Nixon, with his shovel face, his unhappy, determined little eyes, could handle them. He was thrifty and basic. He had no illusions. He was someone you could trust.
Of course it was still early in 1972. Our neighbors called Nixon Tricky Dick, like everyone else, but joking about crooked politicians was just a way of looking savvy; they didnât believe he was any worse than any other politician. Or rather, they didnât yet believe that there was no such thing as good governmentâjust a few bad politicians. Neither did they lock their doors at night, or dream of applying the word âdysfunctionalâ to families.
Vietnam was so distant for most of them, a glimpse of jungles or rice paddies on the evening news. The Cold War seemed frozen far away. About as activist as our neighbors gotwas to sign a petition my mother had circulated in January to save the patch of woods behind the mall from being made into a parking garage.
In those days I still loved the quiet brick view of the Morrisesâ and the Sperlingsâ split-levels from our porch, with their box-shaped lawns and square-trimmed hedges. I loved the sight of metal trash cans lined up on the street every Wednesday morning. I loved neat leaf piles. I also loved the quickening smell of lighter fluid and charcoal on summer evenings, when every house became a campsite, the street became a river, and we ran through dark backyards to the sinuous burble of television sets.
Then my father left, and a few months after that Boyd Ellison was killed behind the Spring Hill Mall, and what happened in our neighborhood began to seem less
As I remember it, the Washington suburbs didnât get expensiveuntil the Reagan years. During his presidency, money exploded into towns that had been shabby, somnolent, often little more than two gas pumps, a Baptist church, and a post office. Suddenly every backwater had a foreign car dealership, a gourmet grocery, and a colonial-style brick bank. Malls erupted. Office parks moved into Rockville; the computer industry swarmed up around the Beltway. Across the Potomac, Roslyn of the pale green willow trees disappeared beneath a wilderness of skyscrapers. Jaguars and Mercedeses backed up along Sagamore Road, twisting out past the defunct amusement park by the river. If my father had remained a real estate broker, we could have been rich. Little houses became big ones, while big houses became mansions, and the bigger the houses got, the less their inhabitants seemed to know about the people who lived near them. Until finally what you had were âresidential areas,â places where someone could be murdered on the next block and you wouldnât know who he was.
Nowadays our old neighborhood is settled mostly with young lawyers, a few systems analysts, maybe a lobbyist or two, maybe a retired two-star general. Twenty years ago mostly low-level government workers lived there, GS 3s and 4s, along with a few insurance adjusters, pharmacists, and small-business owners. They drove Chevrolets and dented Ford station wagons. They kept bowling trophies on the mantel in the paneled den and invited their neighbors over for iced tea and mixed nuts while their kids played skidoo in the rumpusroom. Even though it was rumored that the brick Defense facility behind the mall was really the presidentâs secret underground bunker, where he would be hidden away during a nuclear war while the rest of us melted, none of our neighbors seemed particularly nervous about the future.
Their politics were desultory and middle-of-the-road. Most of them had voted for Nixon; they had also voted for Kennedy two terms before. For them, as for the rest of the country, Kennedy had been a romantic choice. Nixon seemed more pragmatic. It was there in the flat ring of his voice, the way he said, âMy fellow Am
ari
cans.â The times demanded pragmatism. There were the Soviets to consider, the Chinese, the student protests, the war in Vietnam. Nixon, with his shovel face, his unhappy, determined little eyes, could handle them. He was thrifty and basic. He had no illusions. He was someone you could trust.
Of course it was still early in 1972. Our neighbors called Nixon Tricky Dick, like everyone else, but joking about crooked politicians was just a way of looking savvy; they didnât believe he was any worse than any other politician. Or rather, they didnât yet believe that there was no such thing as good governmentâjust a few bad politicians. Neither did they lock their doors at night, or dream of applying the word âdysfunctionalâ to families.
Vietnam was so distant for most of them, a glimpse of jungles or rice paddies on the evening news. The Cold War seemed frozen far away. About as activist as our neighbors gotwas to sign a petition my mother had circulated in January to save the patch of woods behind the mall from being made into a parking garage.
In those days I still loved the quiet brick view of the Morrisesâ and the Sperlingsâ split-levels from our porch, with their box-shaped lawns and square-trimmed hedges. I loved the sight of metal trash cans lined up on the street every Wednesday morning. I loved neat leaf piles. I also loved the quickening smell of lighter fluid and charcoal on summer evenings, when every house became a campsite, the street became a river, and we ran through dark backyards to the sinuous burble of television sets.
Then my father left, and a few months after that Boyd Ellison was killed behind the Spring Hill Mall, and what happened in our neighborhood began to seem less
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