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Pothole-ier than thou

As we swerve around potholes, some of us also wonder about them. Why are they so named? How do they form? Is there a poem by an Inquirer staffer about them. And might the Inquirer and philly.com have an interactive map so we can mark the location of our roadway nemeses? The answer to all of these questions is, "yes." Read on.

The roads are vicious these days. They are under siege from ruinous ruts and dastardly divots.

Our commutes, not to mention our cars, are being plundered and pounded by POTHOLES! They are everywhere, it seems, in Montgomery County.

And everywhere outside of the county. The country. The world. Does not even the moon have craters? But not as many as we all seem to be driving in and around on our patch of Planet Earth.

"You can't even spit without hitting a pothole," said regional spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Charles Metzger, who is based in King of Prussia.

This winter has seen a particularly prolific production of potholes.

From Dec. 1, 2013 to Monday, PennDOT used 1,506 tons of asphalt and cold patch to fill potholes, Metzger said. From Dec. 1, 2012 to Feb. 18, 2013, PennDOT used 1,000 tons. Money for such fixes come from an annual pothole-repair budget of $2.5 million, Metzger said.

If you are like me — and here’s hoping you aren’t in most ways — as you have swerved carefully around them, you have wondered about potholes.

What are they? Why are they called potholes? Is the largest pothole ever in Pennsylvania, near Scranton, in a state park named after it?

Has anyone ever written a poem about potholes? Does The Inquirer have an interactive map on which you can help other drivers by noting where potholes are located?

Wonder no more.

Where does the word pothole come from?

Like so many things in life, different sources have different answers.

Says the website Pothole.info, "Folklore has it that the famous road builders of the Roman Empire, more than 3,000 years ago, were hampered by potters who dug up chunks of clay from the smooth highways of that time. The clay became pots, and hence the name. But that doesn't entirely make sense, since Roman roads were made of a combination of stones, lime, coarse sand and sometimes metal."

Oxford Dictionaries gives this etymology: "early 19th century: from Middle English pot 'pit' (perhaps of Scandinavian origin) + hole."

So as not to sow even more divisions, let us say that the word's origin comes from the ages-old Romandinavians, a people of pit-digging potters who also liked to build roads.

What causes potholes to form?

A number of factors could cause potholes, but let's focus on the most likely culprit of February: the freeze/thaw cycle.

When snow or ice melts, the resulting water seeps into cracks in the pavement. When the water freezes, it expands and widens the crack upward and around it, making the ground weaker. When traffic rolls over that weakened spot, it eventually pushes it in to meet the hole that was forming underneath the surface.

More snow, more melting, more freezing, more traffic. Voilá! A pothole is revealed. PennDOT's Metzger uses the example of a plastic spoon to illustrate that cycle.

Take the spoon and hold it parallel to the ground.

"You take your thumbs and push it up — that's water expanding underneath the pavement. You take your forefingers and push it down — that's when water contracts. You do it enough times, that spoon will break."
Spoon, schmoon. This is Montgomery County spokesman Frank Custer's anecdotal explanation of potholes:

"My wife, Martha, and I were heading down to a Temple basketball game at the Liacouras Center from our home near Lansdale. "It's always a toss-up — do you take the Schuylkill Expressway, or do you go down via Chestnut Hill/Lincoln Drive/Kelly Drive?

"KYW said the expressway was tied up, so we opted for the 'back way.' Turned right on Cresheim Valley Road from Stenton Avenue, and just as we were about to cross Germantown Avenue (where the cobblestones begin), there was a big puddle, only it wasn't just a puddle. It was a crater with water.

"The car felt like it was going to come apart (my wife's car, so she had a small conniption — as if I could help it).

"I continued to drive thinking I had escaped any damage, but by the time we reached the four-lane portion of Lincoln Drive in Mount Airy/Germantown, the tire was flat and my wife was pumped. Game time 30 minutes away. My creaky knees are not getting down to change the tire (oh, and I forgot, it is pouring rain), so we call AAA. A repair truck was on the scene in about an hour.

"The gentleman changes the tire, but by now, the game, which we had been following on the radio, was into the second half. Too late to go to the game, so, ever resourceful, we drove to one of our favorite restaurants and had an early dinner."

That anecdote is almost poetic, which leads us to answering one of the questions posed above: Yes, there is a poem on potholes. Actually, it was written in March 2003, when I was on the Inquirer Editorial Board, as a poem-itorial, by the newspaper's own Master Mr. Poet, John Timpane. Here it is, republished in its entirety:

How bent was my axle: A diversion
The potholes,
the potholes,
the godforsaken potholes!
Road-acne of the winter season where once there were not holes!
But now they're here, and brother, sister, cousin, now you got holes!
The potholes! potholes! potholes! potholes! potholes! potholes! potholes!
The highways,
poor highways,
poor traffic-fractured highways,
Route 95, Route 413, Route Anything, they got 'em,
they're blammed and smashed and ripped and torn and pitted to the bottom by potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes.
Your axle,
your axle,
your all-important axle will bend and kink and bust and break when it contacts the potholes,
and jar and jam and jig your head until you're seeing spot-holes from potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes.
The impact,
the impact,
the quite surprising impact communicated from the chassis to your noggin — in fact,
it loosens teeth and brain and robs you of command of syntact!
Dang potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes! potholes!
The taxes (what taxes?)
(who's gonna pay the taxes?)
that pay to keep the roadways smooth and free of holes — the facts is no bucks could be enough! We fall behind! The pothole wracks us!
Oh, potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes, potholes!
It's coming,
it's coming,
the Day of Crunch is coming when everybody all falls in and potholes disappear us,
and deep in Pothole Land, we'll curse our fate, but none will hear us Cry, "Potholes! potholes! potholes! potholes! potholes! potholes! potholes!"

Does my road have the largest pothole in the world? 

No. Some say the largest pothole anywhere is in Lackawanna County's Archbald Pothole State Park, near Scranton in the Borough of Archbald. Of course, it's not the same type of pothole.

"The park is named for Archbald Pothole, a geologic feature that formed during the Wisconsin Glacial Period, around 15,000 years ago," according to the park's website. "The pothole is 38 feet deep and has an elliptical shape. The diameter of the pothole decreases downward. The largest diameter is 42 feet by 24 feet. At the bottom it is 17 feet by 14 feet. The pothole has a volume of about 18,600 cubic feet, so could hold about 140,000 gallons. It would take 35 fire truck tankers to fill the pothole."

Ironically, unlike most every other pothole in the world, the Archbald pothole is closed in the winter for cleaning and other maintenance, said park manager Kevin Koflanovich. That's to help the 20,000 annual park visitors see it in all of its glacial glory.

"It's a really neat attraction," Koflanovich said. "Gosh, back in the 1950s, they had a big sign hanging that it was a wonder of the world."

Finally, yes, The Inquirer has an interactive map, made by Philly.com, at http://www.inquirer.com/potholes.
We hope readers will visit that website and use the map to place markers by the locations of potholes they have come across, so that those ruinous ruts and dastardly divots may not, as Timpane so artfully wrote, "disappear us."