So, I was sitting at

So, I was sitting at my table eating Cinnamon Life reading a magazine article this morning, when I looked up and out the window in my dinning room. Something looked strange across the street. Too much open space, I thought. Then it hit me, “Oh my gosh, the house is gone.” Gone! No more house! Just a big hole in the ground where they basement and drive way used to be. Of course, I quickly noticed the big yellow back-end loader sitting there.
The house had been slated to be torn down for a long time, but there were all kinds of problems due to a few people campaigning to save the “grand old homes of Highland Square.” This house, of course, was anything but grand. It is really a sad story that lead up to this house being torn down. An Old woman who was not quite all there lived in the house with her son (I think). He was in a wheelchair and mentally not right. They had lived there for years and years, back when the whole family was together and the kids were being raised. From my neighbors, I guess there were problems with the family and neighbors for years. Anyway, they obviously didn’t have money to keep up the house, and one son I talked to said the other children would not help at all. “All they want is the stuff inside when Mom dies,” he said. Okay.
The woman had a stroke about a year or so ago and eventually died. The house has been empty all this time with some third parties trying to get their hands on it to sell. The house was in horrible shape; even the staircase was warped because of water streaming into the house from the leaky roof.
It is sad that it had to come to this, but I am glad the house was torn down rather then a land-lord buying the place, throwing a couple thousands dollars of cosmetic repaired into the house, and then renting it to students or as section–8 housing. We have a lot of experience with those types of things in this neighborhood, and it has not turned out well. Not that it can’t, but it just hasn’t.
They’ve started up again. 7:30 am –early! They are trying to break up a large piece of concrete that used to be a retaining wall that kept the ground back from the driveway. The back-end loader raises the huge piece of concrete as far up as they can get it (nearly as high as the telephone poles) and then drop it. My windows shake. It is a very stubborn piece of concrete. If I ever have a retaining wall for whatever reason, I want that kind!

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