Paving

    When I was a tot, in our neighborhood were paved, but it wasn't the blacktop invariably used today. Instead, it looked like... well, hell, I looked it up, so let's go at this from the other direction. It was tar macadam. Now because later on, people (mainly British ones) also use the same term to refer to blacktop, it got a bit confusing. The roads I grew up with were like peanut brittle made out of gravel. Well, not that flat, but anyway like gravel glued together. This apparently is tar macadam.
    I was still a child when the city started resurfacing out neighborhood streets using asphalt. And since I could see bits of gravel in the asphalt, I thought that this was how the tarmac streets had started off. The black stuff just eventually washed away and left just the glued together gravel.
    Now I swear that I suggested this explanation to an older person at the time, a sibling or a parent, and they told me that I was right. Perhaps I imagined it; my family took pains to give me correct information about everything in life, and I can't see any reason this would have been the exception. Still, in my heart of hearts, I believed until I looked it up the other day that this was how those glued-together gravel roads were created. Truth to tell, I still believe it.
    Looking back, I have no idea why it ever seemed like a good idea to use this surface on residential streets, especially during a baby boom. I certainly remember scraping my knee pretty thoroughly when trying and failing to ride my tricycle down the big hill on Mimosa Road next to our house at age 5. Mind you, asphalt probably wouldn't have been a big improvement. Better on bare feet, though, as I recall.