For Sanford and my old stomping grounds, better roads literally lie ahead

A few years ago, I stuck an old home movie in the VCR and made an interesting discovery. The neighborhood of my childhood pretty much looked the same 30-plus years ago as it did until just recently.

The video showed a party my family held at my house in the spring of 1988, when I was a sophomore in high school. My friend had the video camera and captured some footage outside my home.

And there was my discovery. The road and sidewalks in my neighborhood here in Sanford were as cracked and pockmarked and in dire need of repair then as they were until just a few weeks ago. That’s when the city’s crews began tearing up the concrete and pavement to make way for a smoother future on Mom’s street.

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My wife, Valerie, says I have a gift for plowing through potholes when I am driving. I suppose she is right, as I have enough memories of being jarred in my car while making my way along local roads. I maintain that I do my best to avoid such pitfalls, but there is still something in Valerie’s observation that rings true.

For instance, growing up, I never noticed that the streets and sidewalks in my neighborhood needed to be upgraded and repaired. I mean, of course I saw the cracks and potholes, the bits of concrete that had broken off the walkways. But they never bothered me – they affected my impression of my neighborhood no more than did the realities of my own home, with its small yard, one car in the driveway, and close proximity to my next-door neighbors. I loved and appreciated it all.

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The infrastructure project started in Mom’s neighborhood a couple of weeks ago. Mom has tracked the progress, taking photos as large machines have torn up the tar and removed sidewalk slabs like they were nothing but mere Dominos.

“I send these photos to my kids,” Mom explained to one of the crew members, who perhaps might have wondered if she was being a watchdog.

Indeed, during these past two weeks, I have often heard numerous dings on my phone and knew them to be the latest batch of photos Mom has taken of my old stomping grounds.

I appreciate the pictures. Evidently, my nostalgic side is even capable of extending to sidewalks and streets. As Mom said to me, after sending me a recent photo of the sidewalk in front of my home getting chewed up, “You and Nathan walked to school on that sidewalk.”

Well, yes, we did, my friend Nate and me. And my sister Kelly and I etched our names into a fresh patch of cement on that sidewalk when we were little kids. And I fell on that sidewalk as a kindergartener and scraped my knee and bled and howled when Mom applied a stinging dose of Unguentine to the wound.

As for the street itself, my friends and I played kickball and baseball there, using manhole covers and telephone poles as bases and yelling “car!” whenever an automobile turned the corner and started heading our way. I learned to ride my bike on that street.

That old home video shows all the cracks and holes from back then, but I never noticed them. There was never any social media around to tell me they were there.

Enter Facebook – or, more precisely, enter Sanford-Springvale: The Happening, a Facebook page that gives people an opportunity to comment on local matters. It can be a tough place for blunt debate, this page, and indeed the state of Sanford’s streets often serve as an example.

“Fix the damn roads!” is – or used to be – a common refrain on the page. It would not even matter if someone posted something positive on the page about a new local project or achievement: in the comments underneath, there often would be some “wit” who would chime in about needing to “fix the roads.”

Sanford has a new, $100 million high school? Someone donated an ice rink to the park downtown? So what – fix the roads!

Well, now they’re being fixed, thanks to a city council that listened to its constituents and put $6.2 million in bonding for road reconstruction on the ballot in 2019. Voters approved the proposal, which is focusing on main corridors and their side streets.

Such road work in the community is going to take a while to complete – and, as Mom and her neighbors can attest, there will be occasional incidents and inconveniences – but it in time it will all be finished and maintained.

It’s wonderful to see. I love my childhood neighborhood but in recent years have not seen its streets and sidewalks with the same rose-tinted glasses with which I did as a kid. That comes with getting older, I guess. I am looking forward to seeing the new street and sidewalks once they are complete – and to seeing the impact on the added pride residents will take in their properties and their neighborhood.

We’re literally on the road to better days ahead.

Shawn P. Sullivan is an award-winning columnist and is a reporter for the York County Coast Star. He can be reached at ssullivan@seacoastonline.com.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Shawn Sullivan: For Sanford and my old stomping grounds, better roads literally lie ahead