Globe — Three derelict  houses haunting Globe have been removed by contractors, at the behest of the Globe city council. Dalmolin Excavating took care of the bee ridden house on Buena Vista, and Speter Jonovich of DJ Companies removed the two other houses.

The last house to go had been vacant for a year or so. Descendants of Bruch and Frances Trethway stayed in the house, then abandoned it to friends, and friends of friends, who squatted there. According to Becky Mesa and other neighbors, druggies broke in, as fast as neighbor men could seal the doors, sneaking into the house from the street above. The house of Judge Don Haines, which was gradually falling to pieces next to the dog park and Nofsiger Inn couldn’t be sealed.

It took Jonovich and his Caterpillar excavator less than an hour each to demolish the houses.  The Haines house was easy. He ate the house into a pile and transferred the pile into a long dumpster lowered from a truck, which took the debris off to the dump. 

The Trethway house, on a steep hill above the intersection of Mesquite and 3rd Street, was much harder to remove. Jonovich took his excavator up the driveway to the back of the house, and ate the house into a pile with the tyrannosaurus-like jaws of his thumb bucket. Mac Maclean hosed down the site to keep dust down. Members of his crew directed the delicate work around the gas line.

 So far so good. But there was no way the massive dump truck could make it up to the pile. So Jonovich used the excavator’s blade to make a road of sorts straight down to third street. Rumbling half way down, he moved part of the pile of former house down the slope a ways, and then fed that pile into the dumpster truck. Then he went back up for the rest of the first pile, moved it half way down and then all the way into the truck.

He also had to dispose of a huge dead tree lying on the slope in front of the house. He picked it up in his giant jaws and broke it. Budda Mitchell chainsawed the pieces that would not break as Jonovich held them with his thumb bucket.  Manny and Louie Quintana drove trucks or otherwise assisted.

When Mr. Jonovich was finished, a smooth slope remained. Everything in the house went away with the house itself including a paperback book, entitled “The Shack.”

After Jonovich was through, his massive machine attracted another job, and he used the huge house eater to remove a sagging retaining wall for a neighbor so her husband could replace it. The hillside used to contain several little homes of which the Treathway house was the last. Owners of the solid and well kept houses nearby were happy to have the eyesore removed.