The Pothole Chronicles

One of New England's distinguishing features this time of year, aside from mile-high mounds of crusty, dirty snow mounding up above our heads as we drive down the road, is the disheveled state of our roads.  Mostly this is due to our insistence upon tar as a road surface, which, not being as flexible or as natural as gravel, gives in to the repeated thawings and freezings and acnes the road in bumps, ridges and holes.  This time of year, travel becomes the art of avoiding the ignominy of bottoming out your car while still traveling fast enough to get to your destination in time.  Signs crop up saying "Frost Heaves" or, on rare occasions, "Bump," usually helpfully positioned a few feet after the fact as if to say: "That's what you just hit."

My commute in the morning follows most of these unfortunate roads.  A commuter going in the opposite direction, whom I encounter every day, clearly needs his front shocks replaced: as I recognize his car by the crazy font end nod he does as he meanders past me.  I also follow people who haven't gotten the knack of driving in Frost Heave season, braking randomly before the bumps, swerving mightily all over the road.  This is all par for the course in New England this time of year.

So my contempt naturally came pouring out when I saw this headline: Road Troubles in Bedford .   Apparently the New Jerseyites who moved to Bedford thinking it was a quaint New England village haven't been here long enough to realize that this New England feature isn't about to change just because they call it in the the local news organization.

Is it really northern migration that is causing the outcry, or is it something more sinister, something more insidious, a silent national crumbling of that which we all take for granted: our roads, our bridges, our water supplies ? 

It makes sense that our national infrastructure is crumbling; there simply isn't the manpower or the money to do the necessary work to fix it, to modernize it, or even to patch it.  The manpower and the money are being sent over seas, to conquer and westernize a third world country.  Meanwhile we believe the glittery movie images of our homeland; the long shining highways and the ever-resilient cities, and close our eyes to the obvious.  It's a fragile system we have here.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, we still manage to get from point A to point B with relative ease, when the town of Lempster bothers to plow, anyway.  We're in the midst of the first real winter we've had in three or four years, and while the constant frozen precipitation gets tiresome after a time, it only makes the anticipation of seeing bare ground that much more enjoyable.  Whether or not the state of the roads is due to a lack of time, money and resources or simply a state of mind, it reminds me that I still live in New Hampshire, land of the Wandering Frost Heave.