Author’s Note: It is sort of weird moving back into a place you have lived before. Old and new stuff gets all jumbled up. It can be fun. In the case of Big Pink, it now amounts tour having lived in five units there over twenty years. We recalled some of them due to a trip down to Big Pink’s plush lobby to collect boxes of essential material for the holiday season. The others in our group watched me push my walker down there so that the packages could be loaded on the seat for ease of transit back up to the unit we are renting while we figure out what is next.

– Vic

There was a small line of concerned residents at the Desk as we waited for inspection of various stacks of cardboard rectangles for proper delivery. We were standing behind a nice older lady we realized we had known several Christmas celebrations ago. There was an attempt at conversation hampered only by the failure of anyone involved to remember the appropriate names. It was fitting, since we have a controversy not seen in this proud building since the days of the Watergate scandal. There is another one in the news today.

The release of the third trench of emails regarding the Twitter affair brings a sense of old times to this new move to an old place. Watergate and what might be called ‘Twittergate’ both feature some commonality of our building in national discourse. One of them is the apparent involvement of the FBI and other agencies into electoral politics. It is not unknown here at Big Pink.

Back when Speaker of the House Carl Albert lived here, there was a real possibility that a change in residence might have been for the Speaker to move from Big Pink to the White House.

That is a demonstration that we drag a couple bags along with us up from the Piedmont of Virginia. If we could have remembered the older lady’s name it would have allowed the conversation to veer from ancient holidays to current matters of free and robust political speech. Instead, we pushed the walker over the gleaming faux marble floors to check the mail-box while the boxes were being sorted.

In the last national constitutional crisis, the Speaker could step out on his balcony on the 8thfloor and look east up Route 50 and see the enormous white-colored place where he worked and sometimes managed national affairs. We can’t, since we now look down on the black asphalt and somewhat haphazard job of parking the residents use between Big Pink’s residential wings. The Speaker would have had one of the limited number of underground slots reserved for those who paid extra for the privilege.

We were all much younger when we first met. While we watched the boxes sliding around on the desk, we talked about the people who once lived here. She asked us why we had come back?

“We moved back here due to medical care issues. Living in the country was great, but the transit to necessary appointments sometimes resulted in more than an hour behind the wheel.”

The prim older lady smiled and nodded. She had been here since the hard-partying leadership of the Ironworkers International Union consolidated their residences and business here. We wrote a book about the times back them and called it “Tales from Big Pink,” since there were some. It is still in print, and became a minor issue when a copy circulated with some of the newer staff.

It is funny to look back on it now. We published it a couple years ago down at Refuge Farm as an exercise in cleaning out the files, and now find we are doing it again. It includes pithy descriptions, like “Big Pink is one of Arlington’s older luxury condo complexes with 249 units located in the Buckingham neighborhood of Arlington. It flanks one of the first big paved roads on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, and the culmination of a dream…”

We could go on about that, and the change in Arlington from ungovernable Confederate farmland located in an enemy state to what we are now. The Freed Family was at the heart of it. Allie and Frances had a 1930’s dream of building the little brick box houses that surround our property into proper garden subdivisions. Some claim the original asking price the homes was $3,500.

They were assembled like automobiles on the production line and perfect for the New Dealers who flooded the area in FDR’s time at the national helm. Eleanor Roosevelt was a fan and visited what the Freeds called “the Buckingham Neighborhood.” But you could read the book for free if you click on the title at Amazon and are content with the electronic version.

First Lady Eleanor was an early proponent of the housing scheme but not the last. Speaker of the House Carl Albert had one of the three-bedroom units on the upper floor of the east end of our building. They called the diminutive legislator the Little Giant after his service in Congress. Elected in 1947 from the 3rd District of Oklahoma, he twice was “a heartbeat away from the Presidency.”

The first time was after Lyndon Johnson rose suddenly to the office, and Big Pink was rising. Carl lived here later when Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign in the chaos of the Watergate years.

We are not sure if anyone else remembers his time here and there is no bronze plaque in the Lobby. But the story shows something about the history of our occasional home. Big Pink would have featured some serious conversations about our nation’s future. Right here, on the 8th Floor facing the Capitol across the broad brown river.

Big Pink is now 58 years old and has no relation whatsoever to the current controversy. It is showing its age a bit, but there are still hardwood and carpets refurbished to reflect the brilliant light from the oversized windows and on our large balconies. Our building offers interior amenities like the Fitness Center with the now-old stationary bikes, the Clubhouse used for Condo Association meetings, a Party Room in case someone wants to have one and prominent placement in the lobby for our attentive 24/7 desk staff. Plus there is an unusual Arlington feature: plenty of guest parking.

There is more, of course, which would be useful if we could still walk as we used to. We are just a mile from the Ballston Metro stop, and sometimes would “walk to work” when we had a downtown office in the Imperial City. Or just saunter to the Willow bar and restaurant on the path through the parks that line the creek at the west end of the block. Although there are not many young families left in the building to need them, Barrett Elementary, Kenmore Middle School and Washington-Lee High School are all walking distance away.

We are relieved we do not feel the need to follow, support or fight the curricula being offered in them. The grandkids are a couple states away, and we have decided to let our kids sort it out.

Pamila, the current desk lady, left to check the storage locker in back for a possible missing box and the conversation about the old and new Big Pink continued. We talked about the Yuppies, Union leaders and blue-haired ladies who had lived here. She reminded us she had worked for one of the development banks that rose from the Marshall Plan. That might have been the previous last time we had to rebuild Europe, which was after the first time.

That discussion reminded us of the Holiday Party the building used throw right there in the Lobby. It was almost time for the event we were told we shouldn’t call a Christmas Party due to the sensitivity of people who are insensitive to us.

The Covid panic gave current management the opportunity to cancel it and save some scarce funds in the interest of public health. We laughed about that budgetary chicanery and recalled one year when we were still wearing our suits from the office and walked into the Lobby to check the mail. The Xmas Party was in progress, with a good turnout since the drinks and snacks were free.

Some of the older folks thought we might have dressed formerly for the occasion. Times change, don’t they? After Covid, they don’t even put a tie on to appear on international television shows. Back then, neatly coiffed, we had a couple drinks and things got rolling. We did a tour for the group of the condo one of us had just purchased on the ground floor over by the pool entrance. No view of the Capitol like the Speaker had, but the water was only steps away and we could fall right in when circumstances required it.

Not all of us had seen that place, so we walked outside to take a look at old times. The plantation shutters we put in #107 were still there, but were closed. Back then, with other people in it, we realized just how small the place was. A tiny box. The Ironworkers gave us a good lead on a place to find those shutters. And American workers to install them. We still had those then.

We retrieved the boxes and headed up for the Production Meeting. We agreed there was no point in talking about either old or newer ones. Besides our group of old Spooks, there are probably other alumni groups from the three-letter family of government organizations scattered across the 249 Big Pink units.

We are thankful to be retired enough now that we are not going to look them up. We are determined to have a party, though, and regardless of the scandals in progress we intend to celebrate.

It is Big Pink, after all.

Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com