GUESS WHAT'S THERE NOW?

Those three house that WERE at l43rd and Locust? Guess what's there now?

Five house!

Yep, you're reading that right -- FIVE HOUSES.

Lovely new homes about the same size as the houses that were taken down.

I'm no hydraulics engineer, but it's hard for me to see what's different about that piece of ground from what it was before. Still approximately the same distance above sea level as before.

That's what scares me so much about the city's notice that my house -- and all five of us here in a row -- are on a potential buy-out list. Behind us is the north part of what was formerly Delco Bettery property (read General Motors).

When the plant was closed and demolished, there remained the problem of toxic pollution. The northern part of the property, which for the most part had remained wooded, was declared pollution-free long before the southern part. I envisioned a huge apartment project arising from that ground. Did the city want to make my backyard a huge drainage ditch?

At Last -- A Reprieve

I feel like I've been living under a dagger since March of last year.

Since the day I received in the mail the notice that my house was on a potential buy-out list by the City of Olathe.

For a stormwater improvement project.

I had watched, with great concern, a stormwater control project at 143rd Street and Locust on the east side of town. Three lovely homes, all much newer than mine, stood on the west bank of a small watercourse. I'd never heard of serious flooding at that location, can't even name the waterway -- if it even has a name at that point.

Those three houses are now past tense. They exist no more. In a very short period of time the structures were bull-dozed into eternity.

So all through the rest of 2014 and into 2015 I wondered if that was the fate that awaited my house. Not that I was idle. I've lived in this same house (it was the city that ordered a change in the address number) for a really long time. My basement had become the warehouse for an extended family, some members of which are no longer alive. I started trying to down-size, finding things in my basement I had never seen before. Could I possibly get ready for a 30-day eviction notice?

The city held a meeting a couple of weeks ago. My house, and four neighbors, are described as being in Phase II, for which the city does not expect to have the money for until 2019 or 2020.

Huge sigh of relief.

Life takes many turns

Most of them unexpected. Wish I had time to write my autobiography as a novel. Might call it The Long Shadows of the Afternoon.

Spent some time in mid-January contemplating a period of my life I thought I had buried in the past.

Would never have chosen to do so, had not outside circumstances unexpectedly appeared in my pathway.