Childhood Roadworks Memories

#MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD

Thinking back to early childhood days, I wonder at the simple things that came around from time to time to fascinate and excite and give such pleasure to little boys.

I remember we'd stand and watch the cleaning of the rain drain in the road by a man with a long pole with a round metal plate on the end. He'd lower it in and then with hand over hand action he'd pull it out, ladling up the black sludge into a pile near the drain. When the liquid had drained away he'd then shovel it up into a cart and finish off the job by sprinkling the wet area with pink powdered disinfectant.

And then of course, the real excitement was when the road was resurfaced. There would be a huge black tank, smothered in tar, heated by a coal fired furnace and containing molten tar. From this there would be a connection to a man holding a long lance which sprayed the road surface with shiny, black, smelly molten tar. Then two men on the back of of a lorry would, with fluid swishing action, like industrial sowers, scatter shovelfuls of new grey chippings across the whole surface. And then... and then the climax. The HUGE, dirty gleaming steamroller would trundle slowly and noisily forward, chimney smoking, gigantic flywheel spinning and we'd watch, spellbound, as the enormous roller at the front would move slowly forward grinding and scrunching the chippings down as it went, leaving behind it a new, pristine surface of clean, grey, flattened chippings with outlines of shiny black. Oh the sight, the sound and the smell of it all was wonderful for little boys to behold.

It all came back to me a day or two ago at the bottom of Windmill Drive, having just been drenched by a deluge splashed up from a passing car as it hit a pool of water created by a combination of a blocked drain and a sunken pothole.

Oh happy days! Would that Cheshire East could afford once again to employ a man with a pole, a small team of 4 or 5 workmen and a steamroller. What fun it would be to watch!

Geraint Davies

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