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Filling pot holes with clothes is a novel idea |
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 Friday
morning I received a phone call from Roger “Mac” McCabe. Mac, who
serves as the director of ABC Works in Caledonia, is an old friend. I
met him about 25 years ago when Mac had a welding shop on his farm
about six miles north of Canton and I was the publisher of the Harmony
and Lanesboro newspapers.
“Charlie, I need your help. We’ve got a situation here, and I believe
in the power of the press,” Mac exclaimed. Mac went on to tell me how
one of his employees had just had four new tires put on her SUV. The
new tires were spun balanced, and the front end re-aligned. As she was
turning off Highway 44 and 76 onto Old Highway Drive in Caledonia, she
hit a very large pot hole in the turn lane, with such force, the impact
knocked her front end out of alignment. It’s less than one half block
from the ABC Works driveway and the highway, but the front end of the
SUV had a very noticeable shimmy to it.
“The roads are a mess!” Mac continued. “You know what 44 is like
between here and Fillmore County. It’s almost impossible to dodge all
of the pot holes. We need to make some kind of statement.”
I totally agreed with Mac. The first three miles of my commute from
Canton to the Prosper turn-off is fine. Highway 52 was completely
rebuilt about 15 years ago. But the next 22 miles on Highway 44
resembles the type of highways I’d guess they have in Iraq or
Lebanon…full of bomb-created craters.
Mac said he and his staff had an idea. They wanted to take a gurney
filled with old T-shirts, and get a picture of them filling the pot
hole with clothes.
I told Mac I’d meet him at 11 a.m., get the photo, place it on our web
site and also save room on the front page of the May 7 issue of The
Argus.
About 9:30, a nasty storm front moved through, drenching Caledonia with
monsoon-type rain. I hoped the storm would pass before the outdoors
photo shoot, and sure enough it did.
We got plenty of looks from motorists, as the procession of four ABC
Works personnel pushing a gurney, Mac with an umbrella, and me with my
camera, moved along the shoulder of the highway in a light drizzle. And
when they started filling the large pot hole with clothes, as I stood
there snapping photos, traffic nearly came to a stop.
As soon as I got back to the office, I downloaded the camera and posted
the photos on our website. I was hoping the folks up at ECM
headquarters in the Twin Cities would post the photos on their metro
website, which is viewed daily by hundreds of thousands of persons.
Since then, I’ve received several emails from viewers who have
congratulated Mac and his staff for their creativeness, and hoped
somehow the photos could be sent off to the region and metro dailies,
and possibly on to CNN. I’m not real sure how far this will go. But
sometimes a small idea can grow into something much larger.
In all fairness to our area Mn/DOT crews, we really haven’t had more
than one or two days in a row without rain during the past month. I did
see a crew out on Highway 44 several weeks ago attempting to fill some
of the largest craters. But before I had driven five miles, it started
raining again, which I’m sure curbed that repair project.
Hopefully, Mother Nature will treat us to a spell of drier weather so
we can all get our yard work done, the farmers can finally get into the
fields, and Mn/DOT can start filling those teeth-rattling pot holes.
I learned last week that some people have gotten so familiar with the
pot holes, that they now have numbers for them. You know things are
getting out of hand when you hear a conversation like, “Gee, I missed
pot hole # 21, but I sure nailed #43 head on!”
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