Reply to What did Northern Virginia look like back in the day (60s, 70s, 80s)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]One of the PPs here, but a few more observations I'll add.

- Until the 1970s, everything was very low-rise.  Then the mid-rise office buildings in Tysons Corner and apartments kind of along 395 started going in.

- Arlington, I don't remember ever being a bad area, but it wasn't desirable.  If you moved up in the world, you moved to McLean or Fairfax Station.  Arlington has always been expensive though.  My parents priced out a houses off Route 50 in the 90s (basic brick houses, nothing fancy) and they were in the mid-300K range even back then.

- However, when the Rotonda condos opened in Tysons Corner in the 70s, that was the "it" address to have if you were a Nova yuppie.

- Being a civil servant was a big thing, but the whole contractor industry didn't really start booming until the 90s, and then soared after 9/11.  Before then, you could easily go your entire fed career and not encounter a contractor, particularly if you weren't in DoD.

- Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, it was always expensive to live here compared to most of the rest of the country.  My grandparents bought their Great Falls split level in 1962 for around $40K, which was an insane stretch for them, and that's all they could afford at the time.  They had wanted to buy in Arlington for a better commute to the District but couldn't afford it.  A decade later their Great Falls house was already worth $150K and the neighbors started being diplomats, executives, etc. When my aunts and uncles started their families, all they could afford was way out in Gainesville or Sterling, and this was 30-40 years ago.  Never in my lifetime has anyone thought that the DC area was cheap to live in.

- [b]I don't remember anyone, family or friends, ever talking about the "lost cause" or revising history to justify the south.  I certainly wasn't around it growing up.  We all called it the "Civil War" and not the "War of Northern Aggression" and school taught that slavery was evil and that the south fought for the right to keep slaves.  I remember some my cousins having confederate flag stuff like bumper stickers (mind you, I'm talking 30+ years ago), but it was never really in your face in public. [/b]

- Nova was very white, had some pockets of black (mostly in Alexandria), and that was basically it until the 1980s.  There was a big Iranian influx after the Shah was deposed.  But the thing I think has changed the most is not the demographics, it's the land use.  This used to be a sleepy, rural region, and it's amazing to see it now be a bustling, diverse, cosmopolitain place.  I think the changes have been positive, which leads me to my last point.

- Traffic has ALWAYS been the pits.  Yes, it's gotten worse, but in my lifetime it's always been the bane of the Nova drivers' existence. [/quote]

I never heard War of Northern Aggression but I was absolutely taught,. As a student at Holy Spirit school in the 80s that the Civil War was about states rights and not slavery.[/quote]

PP here.  So we are from sort of the same era, and I was taught that the Civil War was fought to protect state's rights as well, with the nuance that the primary right the southern states were fighting for was to protect slavery and their slave-based economy.  I compare that to what I've heard about the Deep South teaching that slavery had absolutely nothing to do with the war, that slaves were happy and loyal workers who wanted to "protect their masters," that slaves didn't want the war, etc.  That sort of insane revisionist history I never heard about in Nova.

FWIW, I moved out west for part of high school and they taught the same "states rights" primary narrative out there too (no lost cause stuff though).[/quote]

I went to high school in South Carolina and was taught state rights, but not the part about the slaves wanting to protect their masters[/quote]

Not to get us off topic, but like most of history, you can't whittle down complex historical issues to just two words, be it "state's rights" or "abolish slavery."  Neither simplistic narrative is accurate.[/quote]

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