Tough City

One of my neighbors, now stationed in Hong Kong, have a 2-unit apartment they rent out near the Capital and for which I act as their eyes & ears. 

In the e-mail mail box this morning was a note from the neighbor, forwarding on a note from one of the tenants.  The tenant wants to break the lease and return home to California as things just don't seem to have worked out here. It a shame the tenant has run up against a wall, but you have to do what you have to do, I guess

Washington DC can be a tough city to plant oneself in.  Despite its history, it is and has been a city of transients. I don't know of any hard statistics, but I would be willing to bet a beer or two that the proportion of those who moved here to work and live is far greater than those who grew up here and still live here.

Of the transients,  I'd say a huge hunk  comes from the military families who rotate in and out of this area as the father's and increasingly, the mother's career ticket is 'punched'. Next are those who enter the civil service followed by Congressional staff, industry association staff, and Washington DC rep. office staff.

The city and environs doesn't to me, lend itself to wanting to stay on once a working reason for being here ceases to be.  In pre-WWII times, it was probably the provinciality of the place coupled with the very hot, humid summers and lack of A/C.  Now I'd say, its the traffic, the high prices for housing and the knowledge that this city is still Ground Zero for terrorists.

The very nature of this city, politics, can make relationships shallow and breed cynicism and loneliness. One day you can find  yourself marching shoulder to shoulder with say the National  Rifle Association over Internet regulations, and then find them as your implacable enemies over a Federal tax on ammunition.  And should you fall from grace...........

I recall  something I observed after attending the funeral of a long-time employee at Large multinational automobile manufacturer 1.  Among those there to mark this person's passing was a corporate attorney who had fallen from grace.  After the service was over,  a few people said a couple of strained words of 'hello' to him and then he walked on his on to the nearest Metro station and on to his final destination. Had he still been what he had been, he would have been greeted by many more people and had had a corporate limousine at his disposal to drop him off and pick him up. There is a saying here that if you want a true loyal friend in Washington, get a dog.

Me?  I think I am in a somewhat different situation from many who move here as one, I not only grew up on the East Coast, but grew up in Baltimore, which is less that an hour north of DC.  Second, I had my family here and did not have an empty apt. or house to come home to every night after work was finished. Last, you can make good friends here; for me, I think there are  people here whom I have come to know through work and living here, who I could call up at 3:00 am for help and  by the same token, would unhesitatingly jump out of bed at the same hour if I were called by one of them.  But it takes time and work, perhaps more so than in other cities in this country.