Exciting day here at the twelve22 HQ! See, a while back (over a year ago? I think?) there was apparently a big fire in one of the houses across the alley to the side of my house. I’m almost certain I was out of town when it happened, because even I would have noticed flames coming out of a nearby house, and I try not to pay much attention to what goes on around here.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure it was a rental property, and when the tenants moved out after the fire, nothing happened with the house. So it just sat there, boarded up and a bit charred at the top, for months and months. Until today!
A massive grabber truck rumbled down the alley (just barely) this afternoon, ripped down part of the garage (which is what it was doing when I took the picture above, through my lilacs), and then drove into the house’s backyard and set to work on the house itself. After only a few hours, there was just a big pile of rubble. Crazy.
There’s another house across the other alley (my block has a T-shaped alleyway, and I live on one of the alley corners) that’s been boarded up for ages. I was leaving in my car one day when an inspector from the bank was about to check it out, and he said things get bad fast once a house gets boarded up — the bank is better off calling in the bulldozer right then. So maybe that house’ll go, too. Only a few more to go, then, and I’ll be surrounded by fields. First person to plant a vegetable garden lays claim to the property, right?
