HOM: Patchwork 4

There was a reason for calling the paving material we worked with "hot mix." When it was hot, it was a loose, gravelly, oily mixture that was easy to handle. When it was cold, it had the consistency of malleable concrete. Obviously the hotter it was the better, for ease of working. Technically called "asphalt", when it cooled down before we got it off the truck the name degenerated into something resembling "Ass Fault." You almost had to chip it into chunks to patch with it and it was nearly impossible to push a shovel into. I only got one really cold load. Bill wanted a little leftover mix used up so he wished it off on us. We tried patching with it but found it was too cold to work with. Even if you could get some of it into a pothole, it was almost impossible to smooth out. I debated a bit & made an executive decision. Bob Peters lived up behind the hospital and had a gravel driveway, so we drove up there, backed up into his driveway, raised the truck bed, dumped the whole load and then left, rapidly. One of Bob's relatives was home, kind of an ornery old cuss. He saw us dump and leave, grabbed some tools and spent the next couple of hours spreading the mix over the driveway. When he got done, he called Bob, who was at work at Pacific Produce, and told him how he had outfoxed the city -- they had accidentally delivered the paving material, but he had gotten it spread out before they had a chance to come back and reclaim it! When Bob heard the whole story from me he cracked up. I don't think he had the heart to fill his relative in, though. Spreading that cool mix would have been back-breaking. We spent the next hour or so driving slowly around the fringe streets and hiding, then went back and got a load of HOT hot mix and went back to patching. TBC (Me) (Blacktail Books)