Not to be like New York or anything (though have you heard that this year's Times Square ball is "covered in 2,668 Waterford Crystals and powered by 32,256 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDS, making it capable of creating a palette of more than 16 million vibrant colors and billions of patterns producing a spectacular kaleidoscope effect"?).

But surely the powers-that-be here could come up with something to drop from the sky to ring in the new year. It doesn't have to be a ball: A giant LOVE stamp used to descend from the Old Post Office tower.

Atlanta drops a peach. Tallapoosa, Ga., drops a possum. Port Clinton, Ohio, drops a walleye fish ("Reel in the New Year"). Raleigh, N.C., drops an acorn. Lebanon, Pa., drops bologna.

In Plymouth, Wisc., "where cheese is famous," an 80-pound decorated cheese wedge will descend from a 100-foot ladder truck. Mobile, Ala., will not lower a 600-pound lighted MoonPie (the "world's largest"), but rather raise it.

Fredericksburg, Va., used to drop a pear, but this year they've switched to a pineapple!

Come on, D.C. Drop something.

This is someone's house on Route 1, the Jefferson Davis Highway. It has a covered porch with two chairs, flies the flag, and is flanked by trees that turn in the fall and go barren in winter. There's a small yard in the front and a narrow one in the back that leads to two large sheds. As you can see, there is ample free parking.

That's because these people live in an American hell. A Hardee's (home of the Monster Thickburger) is the next-door neighbor. There's a huge strip mall in back and a Nissan dealership directly across approximately 10 lanes of highway. The house is the only non-commercial, non-industrial building for miles, nestled in the middle of exhaust clouds from the cars spilling off in desperation from traffic-choked I-95 to traffic-choked Route 1. It's the holdout to the unholy boom that is Fredericksburg, Massaponax, et al. An acquaintance who grew up there says these people just refused to give in. I'm now obsessed with this house and the people who live there. Not obsessed enough to drive out to Hell again, but I've tried a thousand searches and have come up empty on the backstory. Anyone familiar?