The view from my backyard, Xmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve I awoke to what sounded to be an entire forest being torn down in my backyard.  I peered out the window to find, much to my horror, that the house directly behind me being reduced to a pile of rubble.

So.

Where to begin?

Close-up, the day after Xmas.  Too bad I didn’t take a photo on Xmas Day, when the bulldozer sat silent atop a 20 foot pile of rubble.  They should’ve strung some lights on it.

First, what kind of “developer” thinks it’s okay to rip a fucking house down on Christmas Eve?  Now, I’m not religious, nor am I into the holidays, but many people ARE.  And if they are not, they still likely look forward to some relaxing time off to spend in their homes with family and friends.  Nothing says “relax” like  the sound of an old house being torn down in the name of progress!  The destruction was LOUD in my house with all the doors and windows shut, so I can only imagine what the people in the houses next door to the carnage were hearing.

The “old” house next to the destruction.  It’s similar to the one that was torn down.

Second, WTF is UP with tearing down old houses in U City and replacing them with McMansions?  Is this what everyone wants?  I am sure it is what the “developers” want, but it’s not what I or my neighbors want.  My neighborhood is very low key, very quiet.  The McMansions are not only ugly, but tend to be occupied with people who like to play bad Top 40 radio while talking on their cell phones and splashing around in their new swimming pools, until they realize they’ve run out of Bud Light and have to hop into their Escalades to run down to the corner for a refill.  There goes the neighborhood, man.  This dichotomy is wrecking my chi.

The McMansion to the east of the destruction, harbinger of things to come.

Finally, when the first spate of tear downs occurred just east of me about 5 years ago, the builders took the liberty to route waste water directly into mine and my neighbor’s backyards, destroying my driveway and turning my neighbor’s yard into a permanent mud pit.  While I was able to secure a new load of gravel from the “developer” after about a dozen insistent, terse conversations, this was at the cost of having a portion of my back walk pulverized by the Bobcat employed by the spreading of said gravel.  The “developer” refused to remedy this situation, and my neighbor’s yard remains a mud pit to this day.

You can understand my misgivings.

Stay tuned.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 10:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.