Whatever happened to ... Last man sitting on South Witchduck Road?

The wrecker waits, like a patient predator, a few lots from Ron Hamilton's house. All around him are empty lawns, with shrubs that stand sentinel over soil where brick ranchers reigned.

The 30 other homes that once lined South Witchduck, between Interstate 264 and Bonney Road, are gone, razed to make way for a widening of the congested stretch of asphalt.

Only Hamilton, 85, still lives on the street. He was supposed to be gone by the end of March from the home he has rented for 28 years. Time is running out. Workers will relocate utilities in the fall, and road construction is set to start in 2010.

Hamilton had a hard time finding a place he wanted to move to. One big enough to stow the clutter of a lifetime and quiet enough to listen to his beloved stereo.

City officials showed him plenty of alternatives, but he never was satisfied.

"I wanted to stay in this general area," he said. "Most of the people who were displaced here preferred to stay in this general area."

It took time, but Hamilton, a retired electrical engineer whose wife died in 2000, thinks he's found his final home. It's a five-bedroom double-wide in a trailer park off Bonney Road, he said.

This time, he intends to buy. But there's been a hang up. The former owner declared bankruptcy and Hamilton has waited while the mobile home makes its way through the legal system. All that's left is the formality of offering the owner one last chance to buy it back, he said.

"So it's close. It's looking like in two weeks I should be where I'm going," he said. "I'll be out of here."

He sat in his chair, facing his stereo, sipping his afternoon martini. Every day he tries to listen to an hour of music, from jazz to disco, Bach to pipe organ. Pressure to move didn't change his habits.

"What keeps me in good shape is I take the attitude that nothing is worth worrying about," he said. "If they can't kill me, I'm not going to worry about it."

He says the city, which will pay for his move, has been patient. Still, it's been hard to watch the his neighborhood demolished. One woman was digging up shrubs across the street where a house once stood.

"I went over and asked her what she was doing," Hamilton recalled. "She said, 'I'm rescuing these plants.' I said that's a good term for stealing."

Strangers have offered to help Hamilton fight.

One guy showed up, Hamilton recalled, "with the idea he would stage a demonstration of veterans to parade around the house here and crusade on my behalf. I sort of squashed that. I didn't want that."

Hamilton isn't interested in a final stand. He knows he has to move. The wrecker pointing in his direction is clear.

"I wasn't trying to be the last one," he said.

Tony Germanotta, (757) 222-5113, tony.germanotta@pilotonline.com