Road work

Until 1952 the road past our house was dirt (mostly clay) and in the winter and spring of the year it got deep ruts whenever it was wet and the ground was not frozen. Sometimes it got so bad that we had to park the car up at the T (about 2/10s of a mile away from the house. For a month or more in the spring the only vehicles that got through were the mailman in his Model A Ford and the Milk truck that picked up the milk. Whenever the road dried enough we would hook the drag to the tractor and fill in the ruts so we could get the car in to the house.

In the wintertime the road often drifted shut with snow and sometimes the Township did not plow us out for a week or more. In 1944 we were snowed in for 5 weeks before they brought in bulldozers to open up the road. Dad had to park the car at the main highway, about a mile away,and walk out to get to work and he had to carry in groceries. My oldest sister had to walk through the snow to get to the bus to go to high school.

Things began to change in the summer of 1952. Dad convinced the Township Supervisors that the road needed to made passable in the winter for the school bus, mail, and milk truck, so they agreed to haul in sandstone to build a base for the road. That summer, in June my friend Roy and I were still 14, but old enough to get work permits, and the Township hired us to work on the road breaking the big rock into little rocks that the roller could crush in to the dirt. We worked about 4 weeks busting rocks on a little over a mile of road from Pumptown to the T. We got $1.00 per hour and worked about 8 hours a day. I was in pretty good shape when we finished. Of course we still had hay making and grain harvesting and chores to do but we were happy to have some money of our own.

With a solid stone base on the road the Township made an effort to keep the road open all winter and that made things a lot better.