Tag: houston

Tom and I knew how lucky we were when we found our house in Montrose. It was one of the craftsman bungalows built in the 1920s. The closets are too small, but we have a gem of a solidly built house with all kinds of little features that give it charm. It has a large apartment behind it that eventually became home to Tim, so it was the ideal property for us. We loved the street, which had very little traffic and was shaded by old trees. Even though losing my corporate income when I was laid off a year after we bought the house meant we couldn’t do all the things we wanted to restore it, for twelve years I’ve loved every single day we’ve lived here.

Our next-door neighbor’s house came to him through his family, so Ray’s been able to funnel his money into renovating and expanding his house. He’s fiercely devoted to maintaining the integrity and beauty of our street, and to that end he successfully fought several businesses and developers over the years. He was nervous when we bought our house–he’d been negotiating for it himself so that he could make sure the property was left intact.

A few years later, we shared his anxiety when someone bought an older house across the street. It had been turned into a duplex and wasn’t in very good shape, and rumor had it that the buyer was going to scrape the lot. Since less-than-likeminded people had been infiltrating the ‘hood and building crappy townhouses and condos, we were crushed when the first crews came in and took down some of the property’s gigantic old trees. We felt better when we found out that the man who’d bought the property was building a single-family home there; he spared what he could of the old tree growth. It was a happy day when Mike moved in to his new home. We couldn’t ask for a better neighbor. I don’t remember ever being annoyed by construction, because I knew that he valued our neighborhood and our street.

Just down the street, a house sat empty for the first ten years we lived here. Its owner had died of AIDS, and the fate of the house was tied up for years by a family dispute. Finally the day came that the house was bought, and it wasn’t long before our panicked questions were reassuringly answered when the new owner had the house painted and a few other improvements made. You don’t paint a house you’re going to destroy. Then he got married and a few of our neighbors were invited to his wedding, so it seemed like he was settling into the ‘hood.

A few months ago we heard a lot of strange noise coming from his back yard. Before we knew it, two trees so tall that they shaded half our block were gone. Then people started tearing down the house, brick by brick, board by board. As crushed as I was by the loss of the trees, which I’d been able to see from my back yard and my office, I was only a little concerned. There’d been no For Sale sign, and rumor had it that our neighbor had opted to build a new house rather than try to deal with the cost of upgrading the plumbing and wiring of the old house. I was saddened by the loss of another bungalow, but I understand that not everyone wants to deal with the disadvantages of an eighty-year-old house.

Finally I saw the neighbor on the sidewalk one day and got the bad news. Why build one home where you can build three? Why enjoy a beautiful lot with trees when you can pay for your new home by selling two overpriced units to other people who don’t respect the neighborhood?

Yet another hideous three-unit townhouse is going on a lot far too small for it, which means their only choice is to go vertical. The thing just keeps getting taller and taller, and now not only do we have no privacy behind our house (or in front of Tim’s), but we can’t even see the trees that are in other people’s yards. The new buyers will add their cars and noise to our street. They’ll drive up our already too-high property taxes. And no doubt when our neighbor and his wife decide to have kids, like so many other people who invaded our neighborhood as the century changed, they’ll complain because there are GAY people and GAY bars and a GAY PRIDE PARADE in Montrose.

I guess it’s my anger and disgust that make this construction noise seem so much more obtrusive than when Mike’s house was built. Every morning I’m awakened after too few hours of sleep by men yelling and tools falling and banging and hammering and drilling and equipment roaring. It goes on all day and destroys my concentration when I’m trying to write. I can’t park in front of my own house because they’ve taken up the entire block with their trucks and cars. Many times, I can’t back out of my driveway because they’ve blocked it. When I do get out, I can only go one way because the street is blocked, or I come home to find that I can’t get to my house without backing up and taking a different route.

I wonder if I’ll ever stop resenting them? I know I’ll never stop missing the shade of those trees and the music of the breeze in their leaves.