My parents, barely 30, got the chance to buy some land way out in the middle of nowhere in Virginia (it was, then, anyway), and built a house that was thought up by someone who had access to the future. It cost them $50,000, which they didn't have by any means. New houses back then were more like $12,000. It was so far out in the woods, there were no paved roads, and ours was the third house in the area. Can you call it a neighborhood if you don't have any neighbors?
Gradually, the Washington bureaucracy grew, and the Federal government needed their people to live somewhere. So, a few more houses showed up in short order. They paved the roads, and suddenly we had neighbors! The area grew and grew, and morphed into the Washington Suburbs. Our postal address was Falls Church, even though it was a 20 minute car ride to Falls Church. After 15 years, our home had transitioned from "Home On The Range" to "Pleasant Valley Sunday." But it happened so gradually that we never really noticed it.
But there was no point that I can recall that it deserved its own song. At age 16, I moved to Spain, and after that only spent parts of summers, as well as a few school breaks, back in the house I grew up in. I recently saw a photo of what was made of it by the people who bought it out of my parents' estate. They got it for a song (at the time), but much of it had the infrastructure of the original house, finished in 1955. They must have sunk hundreds of thousands into it, and it looks like it from the outside. I assume they did as much for the inside. For all the number of times I have been back to DC since I lost my parents, I have not been back to the house since. I suppose I would if invited, and had the time, but neither has happened, and probably won't. Sic transit gloria mundi.
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