LETTERS: THOSE EYESORES ALONG HIGHWAYS COULD BE AVOIDED

To the editor:

We have relatives who live in southeastern Iowa whom we visit perhaps once a year. Their homes in Lee County are pleasant, well-groomed spots, and I am happy when I see them and remember that cousins live there. But to reach this charming spot, we must drive along a stretch of highway in our own state which, it seems, God has forsaken: mile after mile of crumbled buildings with rusty, torn roofs, twisted hay rakes right up to the roadway, Model A pickups with glass shattered and shredded tires, random piles of sand and dirt. The houses, long abandoned, were once new, and we can imagine that a family was happy with its brand-new house. But for 40 years the only tenant has been ruin.

Here babies were born and old-timers checked out. But things change. Even as I write this description I become saddened and somewhat angry. The owners probably said, "It is mine. I can do with it as I please."

But the owner does not own the road. He does not own my mind and spirit. Does he have a right to give the hundreds who drive along this highway a blighted day? In the years that I have lived in Southeast Missouri, I have watched elegant barns near the city become tumbled masses of rubble. Some of them were beautifully round structures, a Taj Mahal of Missouri barns. I wonder if the owner of the Taj Mahal says, "I can do with it as I want"?

I know things change. I observed this long ago. I know that modern hay baling, for example, makes the big hay loft obsolete. It will never be needed again. But if it is still mine, the ruin is also mine. A bulldozer will quickly change the eyesore to a level tract of ground. The owners will never awaken one morning to discover the barn brand new and his arthritis gone. Years ago a friend asked me to pull strings to get the owner of an auto junkyard near her house to remove it. She had a point. All of my pride in being a human being was violated by this trash heap so near to the breakfast bowl of oatmeal every morning. But even as she asked, she realized that the boundary line of the city included her house, but not the junkyard. There were no strings to pull.

As I write to defend the idea of county zoning, I am prepared to feel the wrath of much of the community fall upon me. But that's OK, especially if my friends draw aside the blinds by the breakfast table and find a flower bed where the junk heap had been.

PETER HILTY

Cape Girardeau