Roads offer annual jolt into spring

On a recent mild afternoon, wishing to put the oppressive weight of winter and 24-hour war news behind me for a while, I decided to take a drive to see how my fair city had endured the last few brutal months.

I put the window down and the music up and went out in search of the signs of early spring. I found one not far from my house, in fact, a harbinger of such massive, gaping proportions that it made my teeth clack together and nearly jarred me right off the seat.

Turning right onto a pleasant neighborhood street, another sure sign of spring suddenly caught my tire before it caught my eye and almost threw me into a parked car. The signs of spring were so abundant this year – everywhere I roamed – that I soon found it impossible to avoid them all.

Within a half-hour, I realized that I wasn’t really driving at all, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. Like people all over Maine this spring, I had been reduced to navigating my way through the streets in a molar-shattering, tire-blowing, axle-busting, bottom-scraping game of connect-the-dots with this season’s ever-multiplying minefield of potholes.

In the line of traffic ahead, some motorists were using an exaggerated swerve technique that in any other season would certainly have gotten them pulled over by the cops on suspicion of drunken driving. The more impatient teen-agers seemed to prefer a “Damn the potholes. Full speed ahead” method, presumably while driving their parents’ cars.

Ah, spring, when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love and front-wheel alignments.

“It’s been good for business … regrettably, though, for the customers,” said Ryan Lacombe, the assistant manger at the Tire Warehouse in Bangor.

After driving along that legendary two-lane ribbon of Swiss cheese called Route 1A in Hampden, being jounced around like a bobble-head doll, I wondered just how many potholes one stretch of road is allowed to acquire before it cannot rightly be considered a road any longer.

If you’re gut is telling you that this looks to be a banner year for potholes, you’re right.

“Yes, it’s true,” said Arthur Stockus, the director of Bangor’s public works department. “After the harsh winter, this is one of the worst pothole seasons we’ve seen in years. With the combination of freezing and thawing, water loosening the patches we put down, and more cars than ever on the roads these days, it’s causing a constant agitation cycle.”

That goes for the drivers, too, who make up the department’s lengthy pothole complaint list. Each caller insists that he knows from painful experience the precise location of the mother of all potholes, and he wants the crater filled fast before it swallows someone. One man called to say he was sick and tired of having to bash through the same pothole every day.

“I wanted to suggest that he try driving around it instead, but I didn’t,” said Dana Wardwell, a tactful department foreman.

Stockus, looking remarkably placid for a man whose hard work is literally coming apart at the seams each day, said the majority of Bangor residents appear to be taking this spring’s rough ride in stride.

“But it’s still early yet,” he said.