What a horrendous way to wake up! The sound of demolition and destruction. Another house in the Heights being torn down. Here it is, SEVEN AM in the morning, when the Houston noise ordinance states that all commercial activity/noise should take place between the hours of 8:00 am and 8:00 pm. Whatever. No one pays attention to rules nowadays anyway. Hell, if the President of the United States can defy rules, then why can't the rest of us? Oh, well, don't even get me started on that topic! Back to destruction. I'm so sick of demolition in Houston. NOTHING is sacred. First the Shamrock Hilton, then AstroWorld and for years they've been trying to find an alternative use for the Astrodome. And just the other day, I heard some jerk on tv discussing how keeping the Dome around is wasting taxpayers' money and should be torn down. Now the River Oaks Theatre and the Alabama Bookstop are in imminent danger from the wrecking ball. City Council passed some kind of ordinance deeming them historical entities, but even that is not enough to protect them from demolition. So what's the point then, if the ordinance doesn't have enough bite to protect the properties from destruction??!! They've already torn down a portion of the River Oaks shopping mall across the street, which used to house a Blackeye Pea restaurant. I just know the theatre and bookstore will suffer the same fate. It's a damn shame.
Crash!! Bang!! Whang!! The sound of glass shattering. The sound of wood crunching and breaking up like so much kindling. Not only the physical destruction -- but just think of all the memories, from all the families, that inhabited that house. Who lived their lives there, who shared the happy times as well as the heartache and pain. All the hopes, dreams and cherished moments embedded in those ceilings, walls and floors. And now it's just so much mulch under the devastating plow of the mechanical equipment. What a haunting, disturbing, distressful, depressing, sinister sound. I can literally feel the pain and loss being squeezed out of every single timber. It scratches and scars my very soul. And from the sound of it, they're clearing the whole friggin lot. Which means the killing of all flowers, plants and trees. All for GREED. All for the Almighty dollar. All in the name of Progress...