One day, while driving North on Arlington Avenue, I noticed cars bouncing as they passed the intersection of Pleasant Run Parkway North Drive. Some cars drove into the left-turn lane to avoid the bounce and others drove close to the right curb. The ways that the cars moved suggested my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the pothole capitol of the United States.
I did not have access to a car when I was a teenager, so I relied on public transportation to get around. I was 22 years old before I became a licensed driver and noticed the way in which Pittsburghers navigated the broken streets and highways. And how beat up the cars were, with so many tailpipes dragging. I spent very little time driving in Pittsburgh, though. The year after I got my license, my bride and I embarked on a meandering trip across the country to Los Angeles California, our new place to live. And, unlike Pittsburgh, Los Angeles had pothole-free streets, and fast, gleaming cars.
I did notice a driving phenomenon in Pittsburgh, something I dubbed the “steel ballet.” Drivers on the parkway would engage in a “pas de deux,” where two cars would swerve in unison to avoid a pothole. The cars that followed them would execute the same maneuver, sometimes swerving left, sometimes to the right. In other parts of the world — like Los Angeles — there was never a need to swerve, as there were no holes in the driving surface. But here in Indianapolis, there are many impediments to smooth travel. On Arlington Avenue, there is that particularly brutal section where Pleasant Run Parkway Drive ends at the golf course. After I saw cars and trucks bouncing into and out of the great gulley, I made sure that I slowed my car to a crawl and crept across the great divide. On one occasion, I slowed my car to do a gentle dip into the abyss, and the great trash-type truck that was following me swerved into the left turn lane and roared around and past me. On one trip, I slowly pulled my car toward the right-hand curb and glanced to my left to see the tourists, new to the Arlington abyss, bottoming out and breaking axles. The monstrous divot is North of an Irvington community school, and drivers who have suffered through the restrictions of a 25 mile-per-hour school zone stomp on the gas and immediately hammer into the Grand Canyon of street dips. Had they been experienced in the steel ballet, they would have observed the swerve of the cars before them and executed the same maneuver.
Someone once told me, perhaps in jest, that if you rap one sheep on the hoof to make it jump, all the other sheep walking behind it will jump when they reach the part of the path where the first sheep leapt. This may be foolish behavior in sheep, but for drivers on broken and blasted roads, it helps to pay attention to the behavior of the car ahead of you. When one is driving on East Washington Street toward downtown, there are plenty of opportunities to demonstrate our pothole-ducking skills.
Shortly after I started writing this column, the 500 cars that might have entered the valley of death were denied the opportunity when the city repaired the great gulley at Arlington and Pleasant Run Parkway Drive. For those of you who missed the opportunity to go car-dipping into the watering hole, please be advised that, curiosity would have killed your catalytic converter.
cjon3acd@att.net