MEMORIAL BEND’S WILDER DAYS 
“My family was the first to own 419 Electra back when it was first built and I was 6,” a reader writes. “My siblings and I loved playing in the bird sanctuary beyond the back fence (Is the treehouse we built still there?) And swinging on rope swings over the creek with all the water moccasins! One time the dad at the house next door pulled out a tree stump in his backyard and a whole nest — literally dozens — of baby rattlesnakes crawled out. All the dads in the neighborhood ran to the house with hoes and shovels and the moms kept all the kids back. On summer nights, there were so many tiny baby frogs on the sidewalks you couldn’t walk without stepping on one. I imagine all those kinds of critters are gone now. It was a sweet, family neighborhood, with lots of kids playing games, biking in the street, and listening for the dinner bell. Of course, there was the peeping tom who lived next door in the now-McMansion, and the exhibitionist across the street who stood in the doorway with his open robe when all the neighborhood kids home from school, but doesn’t every neighborhood have its charms?” The house came down last month — one of about 19 demolitions approved for the neighborhood since Harvey. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo of 419 Electra Dr.: Memorial Bend Architecture
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Ah… yeah, very sad what has happened to our neighborhood a d seeing all these houses taken down. Even as one of the loudest voices of preservation in the Bend, I can’t fault these neighbors. I just hope they are their families recover. Some homes will be saved, some lost but lives need to be rebuilt first.
We miss not being in the neighborhood, waiting as we are in temporary accommodation while our home of over a decade will be demolished and slowly replaced by our new home. Harvey ripped through our home and left us with two options, sell and leave or reinvest in a neighborhood we like. Without flood insurance repairing a broken home (damaged foundation, a third of studs rotten and missing) was never an option. By the time we move back home and into the neighborhood again it’ll be about 15 months since Harvey. But I think getting back to some level of normality for Memorial Bend will take at least two years.
Charms?