This house brings back such strong memories from my childhood. When I was in fifth grade, my (at the time) small town of Frisco had a rumor milling around. There was a new mansion being built on a huge lot of land right by the local sports fields and an elementary school, and everyone at my school whole-heartedly believed that the mansion was going to belong to Tony Romo. Obviously, it was just a rumor, but me and my friends watched this mansion build from the ground up, with its castle-esque exterior and huge iron fence keeping it protected from the outside. There was a fountain put in front of the house and it truly looked like a mansion from a Halloween movie. Once it was done being built, we waited patiently for Tony Romo to arrive. That clearly never happened, but no one else seemed to be moving in either. Because this mansion was such a stick in the mud compared to the rest of Frisco, it had gained some public traction throughout the years of it being built. A few weeks after its completion, a news article was released stating that the original buyer of the land and house was found guilty of fraud, so they never actually finished the interior of the house. So this once believed future mansion of Tony Romo was actually just an exterior for an empty interior. No details, no rooms, and no one to live there. Over the next several years the grass in the lawn grew tall and chains were put on the fence, until one day two years ago someone anonymously bought the house and finally finished the project. Now it is off the market and someone resides inside, but to me it will always be Tony Romo’s forgotten mansion.

Emma Kemp