Tarred but never feathered

As I gazed at several blocks of freshly poured roadway on East H Street, marred by tire tracks Tuesday morning, I couldn't help but feel sorry for everyone involved.

Obviously my heart went out to the construction workers who labored extensively in the heat for the last several weeks only to realize much of it would need to be repeated. I also felt bad for city staff that would have to wait a while longer before checking phase two off their "to-do" list and, of course, local residents that are faced with having their daily travels detoured, or neighborhood traffic increased, for that much longer.

As odd as it may sound to some, I had great sympathy for the woman driving the car that caused the more than $40,000 in damage to the road project. That may have something to do with an experience from my childhood, when I wasn't much older than Declan is now, when I found myself leaving my own mark on a freshly tarred street in North Dakota.

Bicycles with thick yellow mag wheels, "dirt bikes," were all the rage at the time. We were a fairly large family of four boys and one girl, both of our parents worked but finances were tight. That usually left my little brothers and I yearning for popular possessions, like dirt bikes with mag wheels, more often than enjoying them.

Despite our frugal lifestyle, my parents always seemed to find a way to budget in the best presents at Christmas time, which is when I received my very own dirt bike with yellow mag wheels. It even came equipped with a two-speed gear shifter designed to function like a motorcycle throttle, which, as you can imagine, was quite cool.

I was racing home to supper after playing at a neighbor's house one summer day when suddenly and instantaneously, at least it seemed that way to me at the time, the asphalt road in front of our house turned into what appeared to be several inches of thick black tar. I struggled to maintain my balance on the bike, swerving clumsily, yet completely unaware of the nightmarish mess that would have followed had I fell off my bike.

As my momentum slowed I doubled down on my pedaling efforts. The rear tire of my bike struggled to maintain traction and each time it spurted it shot the warm tar up my backside. By the time I reached our driveway, which is about when it finally occurred to me that something wasn't right with this situation, I had tar all over the back of my legs, shorts, shirt, neck and head.

I jumped off my back as I rolled it up the drive and looked back to see the swerving canyon I had created in what only then did I realize was a freshly paved street.

At each end of our street, bright orange and white wooden barricades suddenly became visible. It occurred to me that whoever had installed them had probably not thought to barricade the sidewalks, where my bike typically travelled.

My gaze moved from the barricades to our driveway and I realized with a bone chilling terror that my entire path up our driveway was marked with black tar. Mom was going to kill me.

Although my bike was covered in tar, most of its beautiful yellow mags now covered in black, my concern lay elsewhere. I laid the bike on the grass of our front lawn and proceeded inside.

The moment I opened the entry way door I heard my mother yell from the kitchen, "Bruce, you boys stay away from that asphalt out there." She quickly realized it was too late.

I don't remember scrubbing the tar from the front driveway, although I know my mother would have demanded our participation on the cleanup project, and I have few memories of my dirt bike with the yellow mag wheels following that day. I will, however, never forget how much it hurt when my mother scrubbed the black tar out of my hair and from the back of my neck, which had been shot onto me as I traversed the mysterious tar river which appeared in front of our house that day.

As I said, I sympathize greatly with the woman who drove her car through that mysterious cement river that appeared on East H Street earlier this week. Although her pain will likely come in a more financial form, resulting from increased insurance rates and perhaps a citation, I can't help but feel like I know what she's going through.

Looking at her swerving tracks in the freshly paved roadway makes me cringe a bit and think to myself, "Oooooh, that's gonna hurt."