smashy smashy
Just hours after I wrote about the excavator last week it got down to work, smashing most of the house next door last Friday while we tried to have a homeschool gathering in our backyard (at least some of the kids got to watch the process through binoculars, a pretty homeschool thing to do...). The smashing wrapped up yesterday, after a few days off, and today the excavators (there are three now) just about finished loading most of the debris into giant dump trucks.
The process was pretty interesting to watch, and I had some nice conversations with some of the workers. But it's also been hard to be confronted daily with such terrible waste. I could have used lots of that wood! Those windows! Plus the dust that blows into our yard in clouds whenever the machines are smashing is fairly concerning. I'm not the only one to be troubled, either: all the workers I've talked to say they think it's crazy to be knocking down perfectly good houses. "Especially," one of the truck drivers told me, "when they're nicer than my house!" But I guess that's progress.