before:
"Isn't that just a pothole?" No, my friend, absolutely not. If you look at it in the right light you can see the hollowness that is occurring in its depths. Also, potholes, in my experience (and allow me to remind you that I live in Pittsburgh, the champion of potholes) are not 2 feet deep, with a 4 foot by 4 foot expanse of hollowness hiding beneath a roughly 1 inch layer of asphalt. This thing was no pothole. To further prove my point, I'll show you the "after" picture.
after:
Yes, that darker asphalt shows the extent of the repaired damage. Pretty impressive. The original picture of the small hole was taken about 2 feet behind the jeep's rear right tire. Obviously that little hand-sized guy was a harbinger of doom. Fantastic.
The day after the crews packed up and went home, I found an elderly man (who can be seen chatting with another elderly man every evening on our street corner around 6 or 7pm) shuffling around in the street, looking at the caliber of the work.
I was entering my house after walking my dog and stopped to talk to him. I said something like "Pretty impressive, huh?" He looked up at my slowly, assessed me, and then replied "I wouldn't say 'impressive' but it's something." He paused and then waved me over to him, all the while eyeing my puny dog suspiciously.
As he pointed out the errors the construction workers had made, I looked at his outfit. He wore khaki high-waisted (old man) pants, a short sleeve button down, worn tennis shoes, and a mesh-fronted baseball cap with a veteran's patch on the front (I couldn't see which branch he was in without being rude). As I inched closer to him, he showed me the tiny slits in the concrete they'd neglected to patch with tar, and then explained to me how the rain would collect in the slits before eventually eroding the pavement in the same place all over again. As I stood next to him, I caught wind of the scent of my grandpa. There's really no way to describe the scent but "clean" and to say that it's only something I've ever smelled on my grandpa. Maybe it's a vintage aftershave, or some really old bar soap. Or maybe after a certain amount of years, veteran's just have a common scent. I don't know, but it was the same. I practically stepped on this man's toes filling my nose greedily as memory after memory poured over me. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and say "I miss my grandaddy terribly and I don't get to hug him nearly enough, please ignore me while I hug you." But fortunately, I exercised some self-control.
I wasn't able to pay attention to everything he said to me, but I heard him say that they'd dug for a gas leak by his house and that, after they found and fixed the leak, they left the holes open and they collected with water and caused all sorts of trouble.
"That's so frustrating," I said to him.
"Frustrating? I think that's putting it pretty mildly."
I paused. "I was trying to be polite."
He stopped and thought to himself for a moment and then said "Oh, well, thank you," and then he smiled and nodded at me as if to say "you're not so bad."
The dog was getting antsy so I started toward the house and wished him a goodnight. He replied in kind and then he did something that took me by surprise--he thanked me for talking to him, and said that he had enjoyed talking to me. I told him likewise and I really wanted to explain to him about my grandpa and how I was so grateful to him, but I knew I couldn't do it without sounding crazy and getting emotional, so I waved and walked inside, choosing to keep the thoughts to myself.
Except that now I'm sharing them with you, whoever you are. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to make a phonecall to a sweet-smelling blue-eyed veteran with a voice like Southern butter.
No comments:
Post a Comment