Road Repair Replacing Live Oaks
Our neighborhood is one of Beaumont’s oldest with lots of lovely live oaks scattered throughout older stately homes. My house is over 100 years old and is a Carpenter’s house–that is plans were bought and the house constructed. It is a two story stucco in Italian Renaissance style with a red tile roof and wooden floors throughout. We have modernized the kitchen which was quite dismal with boarded up windows, a water heater in one corner and a huge forged iron chandelier more in keeping with a barbeque place. The hallway chandelier was silver–we had it replated nickel–more in our budget. Bathroom fixtures have also been replaced but the arrangement of the rooms with the many doors and tiny closets has been maintained.
But that has nothing to do with the “progress” to which we have been subjected. Drainage has always been a problem with the apartment complex down the street frequently having water over the car wheel wells of the apartment dwellers–who would rather park on the street than in their enclosed parking area. A decision was made to ‘improve’ the drainage by cutting down many of the live oaks that lined the street—the ones that survived Hurricane Rita and Ike.
We now have huge bulldozers and assorted parts plus the new drainage components up and down the streets. It is always a challenge to get from home to anywhere as the streets are blocked from the project to the west and by trains to the east. Access to the north is frequently blocked by the ‘progress’ and southern routes take me through not very nice areas of town.
When completed, the people that live in the West End that want rapid access to downtown will be able to drive 55 through a 35 zone–and we will no longer have a walking neighborhood.
Sigh!
Here is a view of the street and of the old drainage–made of bricks. I was tempted to try to pry apart one of the bricks for my brick collection but I didn’t have a chisel in my truck.
Sylvia Weir Art 
so sad to see trees taken down for “progress” happens in my neighborhood as well…….some people have no sense
I agree– some people think ‘new’ is always better—and trees are messy with pollen and leaves.