Pot Holes..A Way Of Life

There is a bridge that connects West Springfield with Springfield. It is known as the North End Bridge. It was named this because it is north of the South End Bridge, and when it was built, I am sure it was a three week debate on what to call this bridge. Politics in Massachusetts. It connects Park Street in West Side with West Street Street in Springfield. Park Street has a big Park on it. West Street is on the west side of Springfield. I guess there was a huge creative name gap when these things were named also.
As soon as you cross this bridge heading into Springfield, the first building on the right side you would pass was WMAS radio. I spent many years in that place. The station moved out about a year ago, and is now broadcasting from the Basketball Hall of Fame building, and the old building is now some construction office, but the tower still looms in the back of it.
There is a rather well known attorney in the Springfield area. William Lyons. I knew his Dad, and his two brothers, but I never met Billy. That is until the winter of 1994. Billy passed over that bridge every morning on his way to work in a little blue car. This particular morning he had 3 other guys with him.
The third and final part of this equation is a pot hole. Just about every place has them, but in Massachusetts, like the flowers bloom in Spring, potholes bloom at the beginning of winter, outnumbering dandelions by about four to one.
This particular pothole was on the Springfield side of the bridge, and I had noticed an unusually large number of hub caps at the front of the building that morning, but didn't think too much of it. What I didn't know was that behind the snow bank, at the end of the bridge, a pothole, about the size of the bed of a Toyota pick-up truck had developed from the massive volume of traffic that traversed the bridge. So much traffic, you never saw the hole because of the car in front of you, until, BAM, there goes another hubcap. Such was the case with Billy Lyons. With shards of exploded rubber flopping off of his right front wheel, he limped the little car into the parking lot of the station, where I had just come out during a news break. Cell phones were not commonplace back then, so he asked to use the phone to call somebody for help.
When I went out and saw this hole and the hubcaps, I decided to talk about it on the air. Phones lit up, people were going wild about the Swiss Cheese terrain of Springfield. So I called the city, on the air. They told me the guy who could get it fixed was on his way to Boston, but he did have a car phone. I got the number. I called him on his car phone and spoke with him on the air about the monster aperture in the road. Of course, he was unaware, sure, but he knew he was on the air, and I guess he knew he had to do something. So he promised to call me back. In the meantime, I had the engineer set up a remote mic for me, I made up a huge sign that read,"Hubcaps For Sale, proceeds for charity", and started to broadcast from the top of the snowbank on West Street. I think I had about 25 different ones proped up in the snow. A lot of people listened to me back then, and you never know how many till people would call the station, and say thanks because they pulled into the left lane to avoid the crater on their way by.
So,I'm out there for about 45 minutes doing my show with massive traffic noise, and horns blowing, along with an occasional BAM, and flying hubcaps. Now the guy, on his way to Boston, calls me back and says he has made calls, and it will be taken care of right away. Yeah, sure, where have we heard that before? I made 53 dollars that morning for the food bank, and about 8:45, a Springfield cop goes flying across the bridge, lights flashing, goes around the rotary on the other side, and pulls up in front of the behemoth depression. He gets out and comes over to me, I put him on the air, and he says, "I don't know who you know, but there's a crew about 5 minutes away to fix this thing". Five minutes later, two trucks, and the traditional 6 people show up. Five to watch, and one to fill the hole. Half of these guys and the cop were having a chat fest with me, standing in the snow, while traffic was backed up all over the place. Now channel 40 shows up. We have a television crew taping all of this insanity, a big wig on the phone, two trucks, a cop in his cruiser, six city guys, and the phones ringing off the hook all over the station of people trying to talk to me to have the city guys go and fill up their particular pothole when they are done on the bridge.
On a morning that started out as average, I made a friend since the incident, Billy Lyons. I had a city official talk to me on the air from his car phone on his way to Boston, I had a blast with a cop and a few city workers, talked to a lot of people who loved what I was doing out there, had the story on the evening news, and made 53 bucks for a charity. The other option was to let some guy with a flat tire use the phone, and play a song.
When you do a radio show, live every day, you do a couple of things. You try to make people laugh, but you never hear it. You try to make people react, but you never see it. You try to make things better, but you never experience it. The one thing you do know is that if people like what you do, they listen, all the people who don't like what you do, don't. I can't concern myself with those that aren't out there, so I entertain the ones that are. They get it. They know the pothole show started out as a goof on driving in New England. Many of them wished they were on the air doing what I was doing. They lived vicariously through what I did, and in the long run, tend to feel better with themselves, even if only for a short while. All this day took was one pothole, a lot of hubcaps, and I guy I never knew before, an attorney, heading for court. By the way, his field? Traffic and driving infractions.