[The Drama Surrounding The Loss of the House Where Woody was Raised ]

Expressway . . .
From a 1961 newspaper article

THE LAND formerly held a home on a full sized lot. WIth the coming of Interstate 40 an unusual shaped backyard has proved to be a source of problems.

The effect of a highway coming through the back yard of your home can be a harrowing if not a sad experience. Mrs. Ledia Baldwin, who for more than 35 years owned her home at 18th and Ong, should know by the time this is read if she can sell an empty lot that once held her home and beautiful yard.

Now renting an apartment, Mrs. Baldwin in 1959 was moved out of the home she loved and paid for when the State Highway Department put it down as part of a turn for Interstate Highway 40 expressway. By an unfortunate circumstance, part of her back bedrooms were in the way of progress. The Highway Department took her back yard and entire house, leaving a plot of land approximately 2,000 feet short of the minimum footage necessary to construct a house upon.

After being misdirected three times, Mrs. Baldwin came before the City Commission two weeks ago which correctly directed her to the Zoning Board of Adjustment. The board heard her plight and decided that if no objections are made after a public advertising of the request, Mrs. Baldwin, now in her 70's, may offer her land for sale as a plot upon which a dwelling may be constructed.

This land formerly held a home on a full sized lot. With the coming of Interstate 40 an unusual shaped backyard has proved to be a source of problems.

The home (when it had been there) was built for Mrs. Baldwin and her husband when Amarillo barely deserved a gas station, much less an expressway--(1923). She raised her five children there until the depression years when she moved out and rented the home, paying for it with her own home-laundry service. Many of her old customers remember her as one of "the sweetest ladies they had ever met."

After vowing not to move back again until the home was entirely paid for, Mrs. Baldwin returned there in 1944 and enjoyed the fruits of her toil until Interstate Highway 40 was announced for construction in 1957.

Now she is left with an empty lot, save the cement outline of her home's foundation. With a 50-foot frontage on 18th Street, the length varying from 57-feet deep along Ong Ave. and 64-feet on the other side. Because of being situated at the future expressway's slight dip to the southeast, the rear line of the property slants slightly.

Presumably the property will have approval by this Tuesday for house construction, thus making it a salable piece of property. Then Mrs. Baldwin can complete her work started 38-years ago, the day she moved in with her family.

Woody and his mother both lived in this house [little more than a shed] during the depression years; while the house on 18th Street was being rented in order to continue to pay the mortgage on it.