Page 24 RAIN JanuaryiFebruary 1985 Should We Pave .Our Dead End Road? by Kim R .. Stafford When a burst of May rain brings us to the window to watch the stunned grapevine sag, the battered blossoms of the bing tree scatter aside, the blackbery haylot sway and topple flat under a good ton of water, we think about the dead-end road we seventeen share-how a tmient is gouging its twin ruts deeper, deeper again before spilling off into that canyon possums own. This gulley-w,asher stops and w~ step outside to track the damage. It's heavy. Down our hill-road the rain pools and runs arid swirls to carve out the ~ame oid potholes we tried to heal two weeks ago with a pair of rakes and a load of gravel. We'll be at it again. As we follow the muddy road-hump home, I think of summer.. About once a year-usually on a dusty August afternoo.,n-my neighbor Frank saunters up the hill to stand by the garden and watch me work awhile, then to snap a grin and ease into the perennial neighborhood topic of. The Road. "Say, Iwas thinking about our road here," he says. "Someday we're going to have to pave it. All the gravel in the world won't keep it from washing down into the canyon. Every time, our fresh gravel just spits out from under the tires and it's gone. We'd be better off getting something p~rmanent done-that's just my opinion." I offer him a blackberry, along wiht my ritual response: "Nothing works forever, Fra~k. But how abo\lt trying another load of gravel? You want me to call Lyle this time?'.' (Lyle drives a truck filled with Wonder bread . and Twinkies by day, and runs gravel evenings in his own pet dumptruck.) "I'd be free to rake it out any night but Wednesday." Frank's face sags. His vision of pavirg paradise is fading again. The simmering blacktop road with its curbs, sidewalks, gutters, and storm drains that had unfurled gloriously in his mind is being reeled back onto its spool. "You don't want to spend a few bucks and have it done for good?" 1 ''A few bucks? The city rate is around ninety dollars per running foot for hill-road. I figured it up since we talked last, and my share would come in over eight thousand dollars. That would drive us out of here." I lean.on my shovel while he figures in his head. "And that's without sidewalks artd drains.'' "But I bet we could bond it and pay on time. These contractors really need the work." Frank is rebounding, glancing hopefully toward the blackberry hedge. I pick a handful and hold them out. · "I just can't afford that, Frank. Besides, the more I think about it, the more I like what we have." "You do? Why?" Frank has blackberry juice-on his fingers and is looking around for a place to wipe it off. His .work pants are always spotless; His distraction gives me an advantage, and I forge ahead to take it. "This may sound strange, but ,I like easing off the pavement onto something different when I get home. I can drive across the continent on pavement, but when I get back here I like to know Irby the feel of the car. y_ou know I go for things kind of private and primitive." Frank glances at the bathtub propped upside down in ·the back yard-the clawfoot horse-trough I bought from a farmer. (We'll install it for use inside, once we can afford it.) "I know you like it primitive," he says, "but you haven't convinced me about the road. I like a smooth ride right to my door. We'll shake the tune out of our cars with thes.e potholes. And with Vera pregnant again, I have to take that la.st hundred feet at about two miles an hour." '_'Just take it slow until we get another load of gravel down." I can only find two more blackberries, and one of them doesn't look quite ripe. I hand them over any- · way. "Have you ever noticed how few strangers·wander down our little dead-end road? We've got a privacy we'd lose with a better surface. No salesmen, teenagers, or thieves out for a drive. The mouth of the road up . there just doesn't look that inviting." . Frank winces from the sour berry, and stoops to wipe · 1 his fingers on a clump of dandelion, then cocks his head to chew reflectively on a seed. "I haven't had that many salesmen come by; but then, I have that gate over: my driveway, and the stop sign facing out. Yoµ really think it's the road?" "Sure it's the road. And you know we have more kids in the neighborhood all the time. With you and Vera's second pretty soon, there will be seven. The potholes· slow us down now. With pavement we'd have to add speed bumps and then we'd be right back where we started. Instead of easing into a free pothole you'd be climbing over·a hundred-dollar bump.." "Speaking of Yera," Frank says, "I'd better get back. You want to call.Lyle?" "OK, if you want to go that route again." "Let's go with gravel this time." Frank's frown ripples. "But someday we're going to.have to get her paved." DD ;1·· •. Illustration by Barbara Stafford. .;
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