EAGLE ROCK--THEY DON'T!

Day One

Help! I was held hostage by the Eagle Rock Road Company. Not exactly true. I was, however, in a self-imposed four-day exile.

After numerous e-mails, my neighbors and I were notified that the workers at Eagle Rock would seal coat the extremely narrow street in our forty-eight house neighborhood. Peta, do not get your knickers in a twist, seal coat does not mean a nice, warm fur coating, but rather a slick, black, spray-on, oily preservative. Our road is so small (“How small is it?”) that two cars can pass each other comfortably—if both drivers are paying attention.

In the twenty-five years that I have lived in this community, our street has been sealed three times. The way it was done in the past was to seal one entire half of the community street on the first day, and then seal the rest of the street on the second day. Easy!

However, this time, the powers-to-be, figured out that a vertical line could be drawn down the center of the entire community street, and one half could be done on one day, and the other half the next day. BIG MISTAKE! Turns out that if one car was going East on the dry side of the street, and another car was driving West on the dry side of the street, one car would have to back up, or drive on the black oily slime, and then turn around on an irritated neighbor’s driveway.

Being very protective of my little, old Saturn, and my sanity, I opted to stay home, and blocked my driveway with garbage cans, so no one could slip and slide and leave sooty tire marks  on my lovely concrete.

Day Two

When I looked out of my window the next day, I noticed that our street now looked like an inky potato chip with ridges. A car had been left in the street on the dry side, and no one could get around it without taking a dip in black muck. The Eagle Rock workers arrived at 7 a.m. The Eagle Rock workers disappeared at 10 a.m. The other half of the road was not even a little bit done. They never came back. I called the company and was told that the big oil truck was broken. No oil. No workers. No finished road. Unfortunately, at this point people had trouble knowing where not to drive, so it was like a slip and slide Indy 500 out there. I stayed in.

Day Three

7 a.m. No Show! 10 a.m. Still No Show! 2 p.m. More No Show. At least they were consistent. I called Eagle Rock one more time, and was told that some of workers hadn’t shown up, but they would pull men off of another job, and finish our road before closing time. Closing time was 5 p.m. I figured no one was coming at 4:45 p.m. By now, some of my neighbors were taking up a collection to hire a hit man.

Day Four

The crew arrived at 8:30 a.m., finished the job and roped off the wet section of the road, but not before one of my neighbors threw her body in front of a car whose driver, a visitor to our community, decided it  would be fun to drive on the freshly sprayed side of the street. That clueless driver decided to turn around in my neighbor’s driveway…just for the Hell of it!

Esther Blumenfeld  (Oh, I forgot to mention that the person in charge left town.)