That old house

My first house was a mess.
Bought it next to Tulsa University and it was in their expansion plan. The plan said that they would want to buy all the houses in the neighborhood some day to expand. I thought, OK. They don't have emminent domain because they're private so I should do OK.
My first weekend there I got up early to go to the convenience store. I was driving home and stopped at a stop sign. An attractive African American gal opened my door and sat inside and asked, "Hey, ya wanna date?".
I thought, Bob, what have you done.

But soon the neighbors got mad because of the street walkers and they made signs that said "We know what you are doing and we're watching you". And they walked up and down across the street until the girls moved away.

After that it turned into a tolerable neighborhood. It was a college area so that was interesting. I could hear the football games and could go to the hopping nightclubs in the area and I could jog on campus. All in all it was a good neighborhood for my meager economic performance.

It was an old house. Built in 1921. Everytime I tried to fix something I had to rebuild it and all that was attached to it. Once I noticed that there was water standing in the crawl space. I went under there to see where it was coming from and couldn't figure it out. My older brother (who knows a lot about working on houses) came over and I talked with him while I was lying underneath. He told me to follow this pipe as far as it goes and tell him about it. And then to follow that one. I was down there for quite a while crawling through the muck. We couldn't figure out exactly where the leak might be.
Then he used the toilet.
Flushed it.
The leak was located.

So had a friend come over and braze the hole that I had found.
Everything was wonderful once again. Next morning I went to work in the backyard watering the garden and pulling weeds and playing with Bob the dog and generally enjoying being a new property owner, proud to have fixed the first major disaster that I ever encountered in my own home.
When I went in to use the potty I flushed and then noticed a 'sssss' noise. Uh oh. Is that the sound from the newly brazed pipe? I checked. Nope. That pipe was ok. I took the top off the toilet to mess with the float. I bent it thisaway and thataway to try to get it to float more properly and stop making that sound.
It broke.
So I went to the hardware store to get a new one. Bought a new toilet kit and took it home.
It wouldn't fit.
Seems the thing that the kit screws into is too old - they don't make them anymore. So I had to go back to the hardware store and get a new pipe that that new kit fits into. Then I had to rip out some of the floor and get it replaced because I found it was rotten due to the leak. Two days and money and promises to friends and finally we got it all put back together and I turned the water back on and the damnit thing went "sssssss".
Then I remembered.
I was watering the lawn.
I went outside and turned the water off. No noise.

So anyway Tulsa University came over and offered me a real good deal for my home. They bought my house, let me live there for another year rent free, gave me a fine profit, let me take anything I wanted from the house and then offered to sell it back to me for a dollar if I would just haul it away. I looked into that but didn't have enough cash to do it. So I let them have it.

Then they knocked it down with a bulldozer.
I was there across the street when it happened.
Right after they knocked it down there were men I didn't know there with metal detectors. They went all over my lawn, every inch of it. They found things. I wanted to say "Hey, that's my stuff".
It's terrible. I lived there for years. Lost a lot of good stuff. These guys I didn't even know were pocketing it and going away.

It's an apartment now. Dorms for the students.
I moved a block away hoping they would do it again. Never did.