Feb 26, 2018 3 min read

The roads in Pittsburgh are paved with good intentions – and very little else. By now you may have realized that there is a perilous plenitude of potholes in Pittsburgh. Say that five times fast! I double dog dare you.

I’ve encountered quite a few gaping potholes on my recent travels. I’ve been jostled around on some very bumpy roads. One or two of these potholes probably would have tossed me out of the car if I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. I could almost hear Bette Davis in “All About Eve” ringing in my ears.

While I have swerved out of the way of many of the really big ones, I have been bumped and bounced all over the place. It’s been treacherous. I was aggravated by the aggregates. Bitter about the bitumen. I felt like Jim Irwin driving on the surface of the moon.

Side note: It’s highly likely that this will be the only moon buggy reference you will hear all week or, possibly, ever.

But I digress, like I do. I have bumped my head on the roof of my car after hitting one of these capacious craters. I was driving along and hit a trench so deep I expected to see World War I era soldiers playing cards inside of it.

I blame this wacky winter. We have had snow, rain, thunder, lightning and frigid temperatures. Then, we were blessed with a sudden heat wave. I’m convinced the multitude of weather conditions created our current predicament. Of course the potholes would be cavernous. It’s not the asphalt’s fault.

It’s my contention that several of the potholes are so large that instead of having them paved over, we should convert them into duck ponds. Picture it, a cozy little oasis in the middle of the byway for ducks to swim around in. It would almost be scenic until some hurried driver plowed right through. I can see the feathers flying from here.

The profusion of potholes is not just a Pennsylvania problem. Last year, in Belhaven, Miss., a local resident went to extreme measures to get a pothole paved. He made over 14 phone calls to the local government to no avail. After 12 months of avoiding the giant hole in the road, he decided to throw the pothole a birthday party (the article did not mention if there was cake).

When the tongue-in-cheek protest was featured on the local news, city workers finally filled the huge hole.

I know I sound like I’m kvetching about the potholes, but by summer I’ll be the same guy complaining about road crews clogging up our streets. So, I guess you just can’t please some people – particularly this person.

This column was brought to you by the letter P.