Drove Through The Old Neighborhood Today

Mom has been gone, now, more than a decade and a half and my son has been gone over two decades already. My son lived with my mom in that period when he was uncertain and before he graduated from that big ten school up north. Ever so often, I will drive through the old neighborhood and note the changes since we all had seen it as a part of our lives over a period of three generations. Yes, I had tears in my eyes at time. As long as I breathe and draw a breath, those tears will come again. I am sure of that. That's a pain that eventually fades, but never totally goes away... especially of a child that goes on before you.. That just isn't meant to be that way, although I believe that things happen for a reason as part of our living on this earth. I try not to remember much of the bad and to focus on all the good times that the three of us all shared together under the same roof at various times in our lives. And there were some pretty awesome times at that.

 Me under mom's roof  twice, and my son under her roof once and one more time under mine. So there was an overlap that bound us all together. Even my younger brother lived on the same street at one time, just down the street from mom's.So the old neighborhood, even today, continues to be relevant and closely connected to the core of making the drive down memory lane.

My brother had bought his first house in University Park in the Park Cities, sold it and today, it's gone with a Ronnie house squeezed on the lot. That was also part of my journey today to not only see how the old neighborhood has changed but to also see how much has been replaced by the Ronnie houses. The quick answer to that question is, "A Lot". It isn't just our old neighborhood, though. It has wiped out beautiful ranch homes of the 50s with two and three story manses of stone using up every square inch of dirt for house. While I have written about this process before and I understand the process that tips the scale on both ends of the equation, there are pros and cons on both ends before, during and after construction.

I also saw that Hillcrest High School is getting one mammoth addition to the front of the school. To me, that is a result of the old neighborhood undergoing a re-birth of new families moving back into the old neighborhood with younger families because of the Ronnie house effect, and desirability of being in that  neighborhood, a well developed area that has been established for a period of time. Then, suddenly, larger, more modern new homes replace the old and instead of waiting 30 years for the trees to grow, you have them the day the house is ready for  you to move into. Magic? Kind of.

Sill, it is always nice to be back in the old neighborhood from time to time, especially when I need to have the tears flow down my cheeks in an emotional bath of love for that part of my family that put their heads down and dreamt under the same roof for a period of time.

 

These are not Ronnie Houses but part of the end results of land purchased that was to small for development of the same number of Ronnie houses or some zoning issues. These are north of North Park and SMU and west of North Central Expressway. This is the third set of these that I have seen being built in the larger scale block of neighborhoods around my old neighborhood. I had to chuckle to hear a realtor talking about 50 lots. Only in Texas is it 50 feet wide and 50 foot deep that might give you 4, maybe 5 feet of back yard. My first house was 50 x 150 and for a first house, that was small, to me. It's all about the land value. Land is precious, indeed.