‘A Highway Through the Living Room Isn’t So Bad, But the Suspence—and Those Surveyors!’

Monday, April 19, 1948
Page 11

Strolling in Houston

‘A Highway Through the Living Room Isn’t So Bad, But the Suspence—and Those Surveyors!’

By SIGMAN BYRD
The Stroller

THE SPECTER of eminent domain haunts the lives of a dozen or more families out in Trenton Place No. 2, half a mile east of the Humble highway. In the back yard of Dee Philips home, 3406 Cross Timbers, there is a stake with a piece of rag tied to it, driven into the ground. Across the shell road, where the loblolly pines still grow thick as wheat, there is another stake. Both stakes bear the letters “C.L.,”meaning center line.

The stakes were driven by the surveyors of the State Highway Department, and they mark the new Humble highway.

The route runs right through the Phillips living room, and Mrs. Phillips would like to pull up the stake in her backyard. But that wouldn’t do any good. And besides, the stake is the property of the State of Texas.

* * *

Mother Doesn’t Agree

“Isn’t it just wonderful?” 15-year-old Juanita Phillips asks her mother. “A Super-highway right through the middle of our living room.”

Mrs. Phillips doesn’t think so. She was barefoot the day I called on her and there were suds on her arms. She explained she was doing the family wash. “It’s driving me crazy with suspense,” she said, “all this surveying. They’ve been at it for months.”

“One day they come out and trample all my petunias and the right-of-way is going to be 100 feet wide. Then a month later, they come out, and I’ve got my wash on the line. They push my clean clothes out of the way so they can squint through their instruments, and then they drive new stops and they say the right-of-way is going to be 200 feet. Then they came out again and do it all over and say it’s got to be 300 feet.

After the 300-foot survey, Mrs. Phillips has peace for awhile. The red rag the surveyors tied onto the stake faded in the spring rains and washed out a kind of tattle tale gray. Then on day a new surveying crew came out and trampled down her petunias again. They were surveying a drainage system for the new highway.

“Now I see in the paper,” she said, “where Mayor Holcombe says the city of Houston may not be able to furnish its part of the right-of-way because real estate is too high. What I want to know is do we have to move or not? It’s the suspense that’s got me down.”

Dee Phillip is a carpenter. He build the little five-bedroom white cottage at 3406 himself. He’s been working on it for the past year, and its just about as fine a house as a man can build for his family.

“Why, we’ve got in the truck and drove way up beyond Lufkin for that lumber,” said Mrs. Philips. “This house is big-mill lumber, every stick. Hasn’t shrunk an inch. We’ve got $3,500 invested in this place, and I say if the county doesn’t give us what we’ve goto in it, I’ll be switched if they get it.”

* * *

Cleared Lot Themselves

“All this yard was in blackberry vines higher than my head when we first came here,” said Juanita.

“Why, this was a wilderness!” her mother said. “We hacked and raked and cleaned, and then we did without and scraped and scrounged to build this house. And now that we got it fit to live in at last, here comes that gang of surveyors. ‘you’re going to have to more, lady,’ they told me.”

“Well, if they go to have a highway, they got to have a highway. But why don’t they widen the Hirsch-Langley road? They’re already got the right-of-way there.”

While the Phillipes had their say, Mrs. Ella Johnson, who lives at 3408, came across the petunia bed border between the yards and said she’d never been so sick and tired of surveyors in all her life.

“I came out here to plant me some fruit trees and raise me some chickens,” said Mrs. Johnson. “That was in July, but it seems foolish to plant fruit trees or build chicken pens if the county is going to take my house and lot.”

* * *

Afraid to Retire

Mrs. Johnson is a widow. Both her children are married and have families of their own. For 19 years she has been a charm at the Gulf Building, and she’s like to retire. Last July she paid $2600 for the little brick-siding house that Carpenter Phillips had built when he first car to Trenton Place five years ago. She thought she’d have her hens laying by now and be ready to quit mopping office floors.

“But I’m afraid to quit my job now,” she said. “Because if the county takes my home for the highway, they may not pay me enough to buy another house.

“You see, property is going up all the time around her. Now there’s a lot for sale right up the street that I could move this house to. The man wanted $300 for it once. Now they tell me he’s asking $800. Well, then you got the cost of moving your house and the loss of your improvements. I say the county ought to pay me $4100 if they really going to build a highway here.

* * *

No Garden This Spring

Mrs. Johnson meant to plant a garden this spring, too. But she didn’t even set out a tomato plant. “What’s the use?” she asked. “Like the man down the street. He was about to build a septic tank. bu the surveyors told him the highway would just come along and dig it up.”

The man two doors down is Alvin Ray, the puppeteer. He and Mrs. Ray and their 3-year-old daughter, Christine, live in an intricate little house at 3402. Mr. Ray designed the house and Mr. Phillips did most of the construction work. It has celoglass windows and a tricky system of inside window and air conduits that keep the air circulating through the rooms on the warmest summer days.

Mr. Ray showed me his workshop, a sort of combination marionette theater, photographic darkroom, woodworking studio and recording studio, which he said was really his wife’s living room.

“Now, highway or no highway, we’re going to go on right on living,” he said. “Take a look at the garden. Strawberries look good, don’t they?

* * *

Will They Pay Enough?

They did. The whole play looked good. Over by the bandsaw was one of Mr. Rays walkers, which he makes for spastic children as a hobby. He opened a celoglass window, lifted a section of boarding out of the wall and swung open an inner window and then raised a trap-door in the ceiling.

A draft immediately began sweeping the house, as though he has turned on an attic fan.

“The house has appraised at $3900,” he said. “If the county will pay me that they’re welcome to it, and the strawberries, too. It’s not the suspense that worries me, so much. It’s whether they’re going to pay all these people enough for their homes so they can build new roofs over their heads.”