Links
Archives
Friday, July 07, 2006
Snapshots from Home The Millionaires of Garrett Park My mother, who as you know lives down the street from UD in Garrett Park, Maryland, read me this short piece from the July 5 Washington Post. It’s about a neighborhood adjacent to Garrett Park -- Garrett Park Estates. I know the writer a little -- he’s a reporter for the Post, his daughter’s a classmate and friend of UD’s daughter, and he rented a house in Garrett Park before buying one in the Garrett Park Estates. Here he describes Garrett Park Estates: The cherry trees are dying faster than people can replace them, so the homes reveal more of themselves each year: humble brick ramblers, built in the 1950s on postage-stamp lots a quick walk from Holy Cross church. The neighborhood is largely untouched by the wave of knockdowns and jumbo additions swamping Montgomery County. It still feels a little like the '50s. “Ha!” said my mother, as she finished reading this to me. “Millionaires!” “Well,” said I; “it’s true. There are lots of millionaires in Garrett Park.” My mother looked puzzled. When she moved here, in 1961, Garrett Park was an enclave of federal employees and their hippie spawn. She hasn’t really registered the fact that the $30,000 house she and my father bought is now worth $800,000. Or that many of the people she knows here are worth at least a million dollars. |