21/10/2024
Haven't posted a story for some time. Try this one about potholes which seems to be a popular subject.
Enjoy
Bevan
Road Trauma
Dear Grandchildren
Plotheo, the road virus, was beginning to get totally frustrated. He‘d been up and down the road so many times looking for the tiniest of gap in the tar seal. If he didn’t find one soon, his impressive raw power would fade away. The biggest of logging trucks turned onto the road. Plotheo hitched a ride.
“If anything was going to open up a gap in the tar seal it would be this logging truck,” thought Plotheo.
The logging truck almost fell into a pothole on top of a soft spongy repair job. The tar seal stretched so far that it split. As Plotheo dived into the crack, the trailer wheels hammered him further into the opening. By the time rush hour was over, he was well and truly pounded into place.
“Look out road another wound is about to appear.” chortled Plotheo with such a broad smile that he had to clench his teeth to stop laughing out loud.
That very night it rained. The once depression became a puddle. Plotheo returned to full life, his full virility restored. Below the tar seal, he directed the water to go sideways and deeper into the loose gravel. The morning rush hour hammered the tar seal into submission and it flung itself beyond the puddle. The exciting rash of pulses of the tar seal giving up, reached many road viruses. Their thirst for excitement reached a climax where they pleaded with Plotheo to let them join him creating another magnificent road wound.
By the end of the day, Plotheo was able to leave the road viruses to expand a flourishing wound. The way they were frolicking, throwing water and stones about the High Visibility Vests who would attempt another repair would soon notice them. The viruses didn’t mind, there were always plenty of other roads to try out.
Plotheo floated out into the country and settled on an isolated shingle road. He found a little depression and settled down. A light vehicle, cattle truck and a grader provided extra cover to Plotheo’s retirement. He was so relaxed that he didn’t notice the three days of heavy rain. He did notice that nothing had used the road for some days. He looked up the road and down the road. Nothing! The road had gone. His was the only small section of road still standing. Where the road should have been, tempestuous water raged. What a let-down, he had worked so hard getting into the best position to get the best road wound he could. He was pondering his next move when the wound, the road, everything swept away in the flood. He felt exposed as he floated in the air.
Plotheo’s escape caught on the wind. He landed on the cliff’s lookout’s access road. By the end of the week, a new reinvigorated storm returned. The water poured down his ever-widening gash. He didn’t mind he thought it was helping him to create another wound. He was settling into the gash making it wider and wider when without warning the ground slipped away down the hill. Plotheo’s dynamic flight to the sky saved him from tumbling down with the soil. He landed far inland onto a very unkempt wide driveway leading to an equally untidy and rough yard.
Plotheo couldn’t believe such a disreputable driveway could have so few wounds. His three-day rest came to a sudden end when a loaded truck and trailer ran over him. Now he was wide-awake. It didn’t take long to find the small gash in the surface. The driveway’s road seal was only compacted-shingle and soil, an easy surface in which to create a marvellous wound. In the road virus history of road wounds, this wound will be the wound to beat all wounds. The trucks had made the driving surface uneven and the depressions in the surface retained water. Plotheo was so glad he dived into the biggest depression and found the sweetest gash in the bottom. His action made the water drain into the soil. Each time a truck ran over the pothole, Plotheo opened the wound wider and deeper until it sounded like the truck dropped a gear to drive down and then up the other side. A little while later, another truck spread a layer of gravel over the drive. It didn’t deter Plotheo. He took the introduction of new material under his wing and spread it further around the wound.
The success of this pronounced wound attracted mesmerising attention. The road virus community encouraged Plotheo to open an academy for bright road virus students. The academics and leaders appointed Plotheo as the professor to lead a new degree course. The campus for The Degree in Road Mortification established at this disreputable driveway. The course subjects included road seal assessment, pothole to wound probability, water depth to rock displacement, optimum wheel speed to wound size, substrate material quality, and student practicums.
The last I heard of Plotheo was when the first graduation ceremony had been cancelled. The degree course had been so successful that the number of wounds they had created in the driveway and yard had numbered in the many not just the few. The company had set the bulldozer to strip the driveway and yard down to a suitable depth, for a new road. Lay a correctly graded hardfill with the final substrate would be a cemented base to give the tar seal the best support. No chance to create a pothole into a wound by any road virus.
Plotheo was very disappointed. He assured me that he was certainly going somewhere to retire. I couldn’t really believe him. I did hear that the capping ceremony was held and the successful students dispersed all over the country.
Road trauma is now in full swing. Where once it happened haphazardly, it is now professionally organised and run by the supervisor in a high visibility green vest Plotheo was right in his element training, directing, helping, planning intensive pothole campaigns. He is the spokesperson for the department of road trauma.
Every road can be subject to the trauma of wounds at any time and pop up anywhere in the nation. The people have complained, the politicians are now campaigning to look for a cure against the rampant epidemic.
Will they find such a cure and stop Plotheo?
Grandad Bevan
08 May 2023
Henley Mens Shed.
