Time to fix a pothole — or two

By the Editor/MadisonChatham This Week

We're all for improving school test scores, shared services, resolutions honoring local heroes and do-gooders. We never want our governments and institutions to take their eyes off the big prizes.

But can we ask that, every now and again, they fix a pothole or two?

Time was, you could call city hall, identify a pothole, and the crew would be out the following hour to make the fix.

Nowadays, potholes and hard-scrabble road surfaces tend to linger for years to the point when all commuters have at least one bone-jarring, tire-splitting, music-skipping experience in common.

Just mention one of them at a cocktail party and you'll hear a chorus of "Oh, that one — when are they going to fix that?," "I take a detour so I miss it," and "We call it 'the crater.' "

Heck — why not use proper names? "Fred," for instance, or "Petey?"

The other day we hit a deep pothole square on, making "Born on the Bayou" skip ahead a few stanzas. When we re-played the song, the skip was still there! A classic case of adding injury to insult by a completely inanimate object.

If we're not going to fix the things, let's just accept it and put them to productive use. Who needs Chile, for instance, to breed sea bass? Let's just grow the things in the potholes on our street and cut down on those restaurant seafood bills.

Or, how about taking the largest pothole and widening it into a neighborhood swimming pool? We can take turns adding chlorine.

Other suggestions?