349/365 3535

It stands there across the street from the school.

Owner occupied drug house. In 2000, police officers sat in our classrooms monitoring activity. In 2001, they forgot about us and moved onto more fertile ground. Every raid produced the wrong people, never the owner, never someone to pin it all on.

Drug dealer season starts with the first warm weekend and continues until stoop-sitting is too uncomfortable. A lot of the school year, pretty much.

The school closes, a new pastor arrives, other things fall here and there and life goes on.

Then one day heading down to a girl scout meeting I realize the front doors are boarded up. Must have finally caught the right guy, I think. I wonder how long it'll be empty.

Delivering Christmas packages, Mike and I head into the church hall with our kids. The doors are now boarded up with new boards. And the windows, too. It's a shell. Waiting for something? To fall down? So many barriers to success.

"I wish I'd taken a picture of that place," I say to Mike. "Like one every year from the time I started at the school. Its downfall."

We walk into the church hall, a dim hallway that leads to the cafeteria. "You wait long enough, I guess," I sigh.