Friday, March 16, 2007, 02:47
Road Closed
The township closed our road Wednesday. It was for the best, I think. I've been worried that some unsuspecting driver would get into the mud before he or she knew what was happening.
Tuesday night after a meeting I covered for the newspaper, I left my little GMC truck at my brother's place. I called Randy from there to come and get me with his four-wheel drive truck.
Wednesday afternoon I needed to go to the post office, so I walked over to Ingman's to get my truck. Charlie was very disappointed. I felt horrible, too, because before I left, I put Charlie into his kennel in the basement. I know Charlie would have loved to go for a walk, but he would have had to wait for me all the while I was in town.
On the way over to my brother's, the mail carrier drove past me and then stopped.
She had made it through!
She didn't come the day before. She said the road looked too bad. Completely understandable, of course.
After Xcel Energy spent the day Tuesday working on the road, the road surface was still soft and spongy and hard to drive on. By Wednesday it was little more settled. So when I came home from the post office in the afternoon, I decided I'd give it a try.
My little truck slipped and slid and was pulled to one side and then the other, but I made it. I didn't go anywhere Thursday, but I know the road was better because it had not hardly been above freezing all day.
The township spent most of Thursday morning and on into the afternoon grading crushed rock along the road below the house. When I took the dogs for a walk around the hayfield Thursday morning, from the bank above the road, I could see the raised dump bed of what looked like a new dump truck. It wasn't the township truck, that's for sure. We can't afford a new truck! The patrolman was using the grader to smooth out the crushed rock.
Thursday evening we took Pixie and Charlie for a walk along the road west of our house. Sand had washed downhill for nearly a quarter of mile from where the road had begun to wash away.
There's still quite a bit of work to be done yet, I think, but after the road has had a chance to settle, the crushed rock will make a better surface to drive on. If we can only avoid any hard rain storms before the frost goes out, or if we can avoid any more big snowstorms, we might eventually end up with a solid road.
Until then, I'll just be happy if I don't get stuck in the mud!
LeAnn R. Ralph
Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 22:07
In a Rut. . .
I knew something was up as soon as I saw the Humvee go by first thing Monday morning pulling a trailer with a big four-wheeler on it.
"Who owns a Humvee with a big four wheeler like that in this neck of the woods?" I said to myself.
The answer to that question came moments later when the Humvee was followed by a large utility truck pulling another trailer with heavy equipment. And then another utility truck. And another one. And another one. And another one.
The trucks belonged to Xcel Energy.
"Great," I said. "That's just exactly what we need on our soft road is some heavy equipment."
Last summer the township ground the blacktop off our road. When the original dirt road was paved in 1976, blacktop was merely laid down over the existing sand. No base was added to the road first. So now we essentially are living on a dirt road again.
After I saw the trucks go by on Monday morning, they parked on the road down below our place. And that's where they stayed for the time being.
It wasn't until I was making an emergency run to the vet Monday morning with Charlie because he had a very bad looking eye that was all swollen and red that I came to realize the parade of utility trucks really was going to spell trouble -- or I should say TROUBLE.
I knew better than to try to drive out to the east with Charlie. The road in the other direction to the east has been almost impassable for almost a week. When the township ground off the blacktop last summer, pockets of clay were exposed in the road, and to the east there's a mud hole going from shoulder to shoulder.
I went to town Saturday for groceries and almost got stuck in the middle of the mud hole. As soon as I came home, I called the town chair to tell him how bad it was and to ask if some crushed rock could be hauled in to fill some of the hole. He assured me the patrolman would haul some crushed rock in first thing Monday morning. But since I can't see in that direction from the house, I figured I'd better go out the other way.
As soon as I got on the straight-away around the corner, I knew it was TROUBLE. For one thing, the utility trucks were taking up more than half the road. But what was really bad were the deep ruts the trucks had left on the right side of the road. And on the left in a few places. I crawled past the utility trucks, hoping I wouldn't get sucked onto the shoulder and into the deeper mud. When Charlie and I went past the trucks, even though they were all sitting there running, I couldn't see a soul around.
Vet Clinic
Charlie and I made it to the vet clinic, thank goodness. The vet is wondering if he has bit into a stick, poked the roof of his mouth and is now developing an abscess behind his eye. She gave him some cortisone and a shot of antibiotic and put some salve in his eyes. She sent antibiotic home with me and more eye salve.
I don't really think that Charlie poked the roof of his mouth. He isn't prone to lying around chewing on sticks. What I think happened is that when the snow melted enough on the east side of the house on Saturday, he stretched out on the wet ground in the day lilies to enjoy some sunshine. Because the lawn is sloped there, he lies with his head on the uphill side, which means his left eye is against the ground.I think he might have gotten some dirt in that eye, or picked up some bacteria from the dirt.
On the way home, I wanted to see if the township had hauled in gravel to the mucky spot to the east of the house. More Xcel Energy utility trucks were parked along that road. When I turned the corner, I saw that the patrolman *had* hauled gravel, but that it wasn't nearly enough. At this point, it was six of one and a half a dozen of the other, so I gritted my teeth and took a firmer grip on the steering wheel.
"Hang on," I said to Charlie as I floored the accelerator and hoped for the best.
The truck slid to one side and then the other. It bogged down and slowed to a stop. I pushed in the clutch, put it in first gear, gave it some gas and once again hoped for the best. The truck hesitated and then it began to climb out the other side.
"We did it!" I said to Charlie. "We made it through!"
Charlie panted happily beside me. He was wet and dirty from slogging around in the mud earlier in the morning. I had put a quilt on the seat to try to catch some of the mud.
I didn't look much better. Because I had held onto Charlie while the vet examined his eye and put a stain in the eye to see if there was an ulcer (nope; no ulcer), my red sweatshirt was covered with white dog hair. Charlie is, of course, beginning to shed.
More Ruts
After we made it out of the mud hole, as we started going up the hill toward the house, that's when I got my first clue that something more was amiss. Sure, the road had been a little soft there before. But now there were deep ruts.
I pulled into the lower driveway and let Charlie out of the truck and went inside the house. It was my sister's birthday, so I called her to wish her a "Happy Birthday." While I was on the phone with my sister, the doorbell rang. Turns out it was the town chair, coming to check on the road.
He had noticed that the Xcel Energy trucks had dug up the road some, but even though their trucks were parked along the road, he couldn't find the crew.
"The trucks have been parked there, running, for the past four hours," I informed him.
As it turns out the Excel Energy crew is fixing a communications line. The town chair assured me they would haul in more gravel and that he would talk to the utility crew about not tearing up the road. If he could find the crew that is.
A while after the town chair left, the Xcel trucks all went past the house again going the other way. Then some time later they came back. In all, the trucks drove past our place three or four times in Monday afternoon.
When Randy came home later in the afternoon, he was quite upset. "You should see the road now."
So we did. We took Charlie for walk -- and oh, good grief. In some areas, nearly knee deep ruts extended all the way across the road.
Randy took pictures and posted them to a muddy road web page. You can see the pictures here. Click on each smaller picture to see a larger version.
More Bad News
When we got back to the house after Randy took pictures, the neighbor across the road called. She actually lives in a different township, but she must drive on our township's roads to get out to the main road.
The school bus, she said, had refused to drive in and had dropped her son off nearly a half mile away and he'd had to walk home the rest of the way. The school district, she said, had also informed her that the bus would not pick up her son up in the morning or bring him home in the afternoon until the road had been fixed and that she would have to take him to school and bring him home again for the interim.
That is, she said, if she could get out at all in the morning.
She was not happy.
So I called the town chair again.
He also was not happy to hear that the road had been torn up even more.
Since the frost is in the process of going out and the snow is melting, the road is going to be sloppy for quite some time yet. If the utility trucks keep driving back and forth on it, it is only going to get worse.
The lime quarries are not open yet, so it is difficult to get more crushed rock for the road.
The road bans will be going on in a few days (if not already) restricting large trucks from driving on the roads until the frost goes out and the ground dries up. Except that because Xcel is a utility, they are exempted from the road bans in certain circumstances.
Road Work
First thing Tuesday morning, the town chair and the patrolman were out looking at the road. So I went out to talk to them.
The town chair said Xcel Energy was supposed to fix the road and said they would haul in some crushed blacktop to fill the bad spots. He also said he would try to convince Xcel Energy to use a different route to get to their right-of-way. The truth is, they didn't have to drive on our road at all. They could have easily accessed their right-of-way from the paved town road to the east.
As it turned out, Xcel Energy spent all day Tuesday working on our road, hauling in crushed blacktop and packing it down and smoothing it out. The road is still extremely rough and soft, but it is not the deep, muddy ruts that were there earlier.
The town chair told me Tuesday afternoon, too, that Xcel Energy has said they will not work on this stretch of line anymore until the frost has gone out and the road has dried up.
Good.
More Frustration -- As if I have not been having enough trouble around here with Charlie's eye and the debacle with the road, I had a delightful conversation with a customer service representative for Charter Cable on Monday when I tried to find out some information for a newspaper story I was working on.
I tried calling an 800 number in the telephone book for Charter Cable but did not find out any information as to whether Cable Channels 11 and 12 are available to Charter subscribers in Dunn County.
Instead, the woman who answered the telephone and who, when pressed for her location, indicated that she was in the Philippines, insisted she would have to open an account with Charter for my home telephone number to set up cable service before she could answer the question as to whether Cable Channel 11 and 12 are available to Dunn County subscribers.
When asked for a telephone number in this area for someone who could answer the question about local access for Dunn County subscribers, the woman in the Philippines insisted she needed my home telephone number to open an account with Charter for cable service before she could answer the question.
The woman had a difficult accent to understand, and when she asked if "Belly-oot" was close to where I lived, it gave me pause.
Belly-oot?
What kind of a town is Belly-oot?
We don't have any towns in Wisconsin called Belly-oot that I know of. . .
I thought for a moment.
Then it hit me.
Beloit.
"No," I told her, "Beloit is in the southern part of the state a couple of hundred miles away."
Then she wanted to know if I was close to You-Claire.
You-Claire?
Oh.
She meant Eau Claire with a long "o" -- it's French for clear water.
Those darned, old, pesky French explorers when they came through this area *would* have to leave behind some of the French names they gave to places . . .
[sigh]
LeAnn R. Ralph