The Good Old Days

With our recent snowfall, I was reminded of the good old days when the road crews used ashes or, as my dad called it, “red dog” – cinders that had a red tinge to it, to coat the roads instead of salt. Yes, it made everything dirty, but it worked to melt ice and snow and gave much needed traction to climb hills. When I was little, snows days were few and far between because the road crews were out really early to throw ashes or cinders on the roads and the buses used chains on their tires. I could always hear the bus go down the road to turn around to pick us up because the chains were loud. It sounded like Santa Claus jingling a lot of bells. My siblings and I knew when we heard that sound we needed to get to the bus stop. Also, there had to be substantial snow for school to be closed, and that was rare. Once in a while, there would be no bus service, but school was still open. Now if we get two or three inches, school is closed.

I heard somewhere that they stopped using ashes because it ruined the roads and ate the undersides of cars. That may be true, but so does salt. We still have a ton of potholes to navigate and we still have to run our cars through the car wash to get the salt off. It doesn’t matter what is used.  Plus, salt doesn’t melt anything when the temperature dips below 17 degrees.

Ashes and cinders aren’t used much anymore like when I was young, but I still remember that it was easier traveling in snow than it is today. With all the intelligent people around the world, you would think someone would invent something to treat the roads and spare us from filth or salt and protect wildlife and local fauna from the resulting toxicity. Any ideas out there?

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