potholes

after the last big bout of rain we had (reference post: oh, the rain!), my neighbors and i were the lucky recipients of a deep hole in our street that stretched halfway across one lane. the (city?) truck kindly came out to place an orange cone on the spot and left. said orange cone became an object of target practice by many of the passing (too fast!) vehicles in the days hence.

for weeks, several times per week, the truck containing a worker or two came out to look at the hole. they stood. they looked. they got back in their truck and left. what were they doing? one might ask. “ayuh; hole’s still thay-ah.”

so i wished for them to fix it, and finally one day when they came out, they did do some work. they dug up the culvert and replaced it. then they filled it all in with dirt. then they left. there was now a wider band of unpaved road that stretched across both lanes of traffic. this band of dirt very quickly became riddled with (you guessed it!) holes, some of which were deep. worse, we didn’t even have our orange cone to warn the (too-fast!) drivers of what they were about to encounter. also, they closed the street to do this, and the school bus couldn’t return our children to us (this entailed LOTS of drama and urgent cell phone calling of parents).

lesson 1: be careful what you wish for.

lesson 2: drive slowly down windy side streets in maine in the spring. you never know what you may find…