11-21-21 The Road Was Full Of Potholes

November 21, 2021

Story Slingers

Myrna Flynn

The Road is Full of Potholes

My mind is having a problem with this. Should I write of literal roads or of life ones? Therein lies the question! Maybe I should make a list of roads where I have been the driver or been a passenger. Maybe I should list some of the life ones I have fallen in. Or maybe I should just throw up my arms in surrender and listen to all the rest of you and your encounters with potholes.

Here goes mostly nothing:  One road with many potholes was on the way to Ensure Ranch Towel Falls. We were going there to hike to the falls. some of those potholes were big enough to qualify as miniature sink holes. Another place that supplies roads (streets) with many potholes is Spokane, Washington. But the city is working on resurfacing them.

 Now to my life potholes, some unexpected and some caused by my decisions (which I will not numerate). Most of the unexpected involved trips to the ER with children, cuts needing stitches, or burns needing treated, etc. One turned into an admission and surgery. My biggest pothole, so far was a red spot on my nose. Many more, to which I will not subject you.

Life potholes seem to occur at all stages from birth to death: a child starting in school, the hazards of teenagers years, for example. Not all potholes are bad ones, some are good ones: getting married, your first baby, your first grandchild (of course all the other children and grandchildren joining are exciting, but the first are milestones and potholes).

And that, dear family, is all I have to offer of roads full of potholes. Now I will sit back and listen to your roads full of potholes.

The Road Was Full Of Potholes

Carrie Keiser

Astrid lay there contemplating her life and how she landed here at this moment. What had brought her to this point? Astrid’s life had been good, but not always easy. What advice would she give to those who come after her? She knew the end was nigh and she wanted to leave her mark. Astrid tipped her head back and slowly closed her eyes, drifting, easily these days, back in time.

It was a beautiful spring day in early May, Astrid was dressed in a flowing white gown standing before a full length mirror, waiting for the right moment to saunter down the aisle to Nicko’s side and the beginning of a journey of a lifetime. 

A smile spreads across her time creased face as she recalled that day and the promises made. At that moment, she felt the road ahead was smooth and straight. Ah the naïveté of youth! Astrid could not see the curves or the bumps that would appear. Probably for the best to not know what the future holds. 

Finding ones strength, faith and hope are lessons that shaped her and Nicko. Learning to reach for each other and relying on the threads of faith and love that held them together building up the low spots and repairing the potholes of life together. 

Perhaps that is the legacy Astrid leaves behind: the road is full of potholes, but you have the tools to build up the holes and smooth out the road. Life is not a drag race: fast and smooth, but a wagon ride: slow and bumpy, sometimes the potholes are deep and wide. Determination, faith, love, understanding and a willingness to move forward together, will result in leveling those potholes. 

She reached for pen and paper to write down these words so her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren could have this last piece of knowledge.  Her handwriting was a little shaky these days, but not illegible. And besides it would soon hopefully be a family treasure. With her last pen strokes she signed the bottom: with love and faith, Gramma Astrid, took a deep breath and released it slowly closing her eyes and slipping off to the next chapter of existence, hoping that this section of road was not so full of potholes!

Story Slingers Prompt

11/13/2021

The Road Was Full Of Potholes

Daren Flynn

THE ROAD

The bumpy road of life,

Filled with trouble and strife,

Frustrates a person's plane and goals,

All because it's filled with potholes.

Driving on a pothole filled road

Puts me in an angry mode,

For there is no contentment

Contemplating a front end alignment.

And what about that new tire?

I wonder, did it just expire?

Did it crack the wheel?

My anger, I cannot conceal.

My car lost the battle.

Just listen to it rattle.

It does no good to shout

So I'll find a new route.

By: Colleen Holmquist 

I suppose the potholes were there on the way in. But we were talking and laughing—just catching up after so long. I didn’t notice. But all that was before. Before the descent into the “ice caves” of southern Idaho; before the dark and slick; before the slip and loud crack and fractured femur; before the scream; before the Herculean effort of cousins, husband and daughter inching through the small window-like opening at the top of the slippery slope; before the moans and the lifting of the improvised, insulated jumpsuit “stretcher” up the rocky incline and the final lift into the waiting van.  The van “lurched” carefully forward. The road ahead was full of potholes—endless potholes—no they were not potholes they were pot craters—the sun seemed to disappear each time we entered one and reappeared slowly as we came up the other side. And it wasn’t even a road—really. 

The Road Was Full of Potholes

by Cary Holmquist

21 November 2021

Flynn Family Story Slingers

In the olden days—as in before the wheel was much used and roads, as such, were usually just well-traveled trails—anyway, in the olden days the Bible and Book of Mormon speak of stumbling blocks.  

So, stumbling blocks were the potholes of those times, in the roads and trails of getting from here to there.  Rather than today’s bane of pavement, the pothole, the bane of travel then were stumbling blocks of any kind, but mostly rocks and stumps and deadfall that blocked the way of the road and had to be be steered around, hopped over or stepped over, lest they trip you up.  

With the developments of better-made wheels, which then needed better made, preferably paved roads, potholes became more of the problem, since the paved roads necessitated that stumbling blocks be removed in order for roads to exist at all.  

Despite all of the road-building engineering, potholes seem to form for all manner of reasons and then seem to be ignored by road maintenance crews until the holes have become significant traffic hazards as wheels and tires bounce out of them or, if seen early enough, are steered around.  And so the metaphor changes from raised up stumbling blocks in the road to potholes.

But the metaphor of stumbling blocks has lived on in the literature that has been passed on to us, whether it is Scriptures or epic poems such as The Odyssey or Beowulf.  And because stumbling blocks is now more literary, the stumbling block itself has become more of a metaphor as well, taking on the character and of any obstacle that interrupts or blocks our way and must be avoided through looking ahead and steering around it.

And so, this metaphor then also extends to potholes.

The metaphorical pothole or stumbling block in the road of my progress this past week was in the sky.  In particular, the night sky and the clouds that occluded the moon as the calendar of the alignments of planets and stars was bringing about a once-in-500-year phenomenon over our heads.  

Early Friday morning (19 November 2021), the wee-hours as it is known, the Sun and Earth and Moon were going to align in a straight line, with the Earth between the Sun and the Moon, causing the shadow of the Earth to fall on the Moon so completely that the Full Moon, known as the Beaver Moon in November, would not receive any sunlight to reflect back to the Earth for the period of time that this alignment moved along in the progression of planetary movements.  

This lunar eclipse, as it is called, was going going to be a partial eclipse, due to the shadow of the Earth would not entirely block the sunlight and a tiny sliver of a sliver of sunlight was still going to reach the disc of the moon and a tiny amount of light was going to be reflected back to Earth.  

The period of time when the eclipse would be at its darkest—its peak-time, you might say—would be for the longest period of any partial eclipse in 580 years.  It was going to be witnessed all over North America and many other parts of the world. 

Except over Montana, which was covered by a cold-front storm system that would last all the daytime preceding the eclipse hours and for many hours thereafter.  For a few moments in the early part of the evening, the rising full moon was mostly visible through the high veil of clouds, but as the time moved closer to the 2 a.m. totality point, heavier cloud layers moved over Montana and the rain that fell from the clouds entirely occluded the disc of the moon.  

Although there was a diffused moonlight that offered vague illumination, the image of the moon was impossible to locate through the cloud layers.  However, as the eclipse moved toward its totality, even that light decreased to nothing and the sky was entirely dark.  

I know this occurred because I ventured outside every 15 minutes or so, from about 1 a.m. onwards, in hopes that looking up would result in finding the moon in ever decreasing light as the earth shadow moved over it.  As it was, I only saw thicker and thicker layers of clouds moving slowly and occasional rain pattering down.  

This seems to be what happens to celestial events over Montana with amazing regularity—cloudy occlusion that blocks the event from view.  And so, many solar and lunar eclipses, comet visitations, northern lights and meteor showers have gone unseen.  Days before and days after the event have been clear skies, but the curtain drawn during the event.  

I kept hoping and venturing out until about 3 a.m., and the sky noticeably brightened, albeit the diffused light through the clouds, as the eclipse reversed its journey toward darkness toward the return of Full Moon light illumination.

In this observance of slow-moving darkness and then slow-moving lightness over about two hours, it can probably be said that I was a witness to the eclipse, even if I could not see the moon itself. 

To extend the metaphor even further, the pothole in my road was bounced into, but not both sets of wheels hit it.  And so, the road of celestial events is full of the cloudy potholes over Montana. 

By: Ryanne Leavitt

The Road is full of Potholes

You don’t know just how bumpy 

And filled with potholes a road is,

Until you ride with a learning teenager 

They WILL find every rut, bump and hole!

Then, oh man! You see the road is filled with potholes!

By: Vanessa Holmquist

The road was full of potholes,

Welcome to Michigan!