Two words
EDITOR’S NOTE: Following is Chapter 2 of “Adrift in America: Diary of a Minimalist Mariner,” a work found in the nonfiction section:
Sanford, Maine. May 16, 1988.
The late morning sun beats down on King’s Shopping Plaza, warming the truck after a cold night. I open the side windows and smell it. Nearby, men are rebuilding the plaza entrance and several miles of Route 109. I walk along Route 109 and smell it. The smell is everywhere.
Bituminous concrete.
If I were at a party for a young graduate who I thought needed advice about the future, I would lean forward with a crooked grin and whisper just those two words: “Bituminous concrete.”
All right, maybe it isn’t for everybody. Maybe the future belongs to the other petroleum byproduct the other old guy whispered in just one word. But as the years go by, I find fewer redeeming qualities in plastics.
Bituminous concrete – the stuff highways and parking lots are made of, otherwise known as asphalt, blacktop, hot top, macadam, pavement, tar, tarvia or tarmac – covers tens of thousands of square miles of the United States. It is ugly, as only a sludge from decomposed dinosaurs and rotted monster ferns can be. And it is spreading.
But running along it and stretching away from it is still a lot of country.
And most of it is still free.
– Sid Leavitt
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