Watch your step, as sidewalk ‘dip’ is not just a blip

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/12/2024 (490 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I’m woken from sleep by the sound of a collision, as the house shakes with the impact. The last time this happened, someone had driven at high speed into the elm tree on the boulevard. This time, I know it can’t be the elm again, because it vanished along with so many others over the last few years.

So I sit up and pull back the blind to see that a sidewalk plow has violently discovered the rather extreme dip in the pavement out front. I hear the sharp shout of a four-letter word through my closed window. Poor driver. Must have hit the bottom of the dip at quite a speed.

This snow-plow operator is not the first to succumb to the siren song of this pavement drop-off. No, this dip has year-round appeal and perennial mystique. One summer we saw a filmmaker on his belly in the valley of the dip. Camera in hand, focused on a marauding forest tent caterpillar. The film title, Revenge of the Worms, posited that we were forfeiting our city to these creatures.

I watch the same mother pass with a wagonload of children each day, all year. They’re on their way to the daycare at the end of the street. “Here’s the dip! Hold on, kids!” she says. The dip is exceptional at overturning a wagon full of children if any directional change is made. It has dumped my own kids out onto the pavement.

In the early spring, it will fill, covertly, with ice-cold water under the snow, lying in wait for an unsuspecting passerby, innocently unaware their day about to be ruined by wet socks. I know when it has sprung its trap, because the expletives can be heard as clearly as those uttered by the plow driver.

Also in early spring, it proffers the particularly satisfying white-crusted ice bubbles, their crunch irresistible to passing boot heels. Young and old will linger to hunt them to the last.

Then when all is melting in earnest, it will become a deep puddle too wide for a parent to intervene in the joy it brings to little feet. Parents will sigh and beg, but the children will splash and scream and giggle in the dip. This is my favourite of all its tricks.

As spring turns into summer, the skateboarders will arrive. First, distracted on their way somewhere, then noting the address before returning with friends to share the discovery and delight of the natural ramp and linger for a while. Young and loud, they cross back and forth, encouraging one another to push the dip to its limits with flips and tricks.

Our dip in the pavement has been here for a long time — more than 15 years. The dip predates our purchase of the property. It has been here so long the splashing toddlers of yesteryear are now the daredevil teenagers of current summers. Generations of passers-by have fallen under its spell or been caught in its trap. And now, being jolted from sleep by the plow and the profanity, I realize this small landform is again completing its yearly interaction with the people of West Broadway. A final four-letter farewell toast to 2024 from the department of public works.

Through storm and drought, freeze and thaw, under boot heels and skateboard wheels, strollers and shopping carts, it endures. Its soundtrack of squeals and swears is the sound of my home, whether I like it or not.

I suppose I’m a little attached to it now. The dip is just one more of the work-arounds, walk-arounds and drive-arounds I’ve become accustomed to, living in this bankrupt city. My own little Arlington Bridge. My own Portage and Main. Happyland Pool is out there in the dip. It’s a rundown wading pool, it’s a flooded river path, it’s a pothole, it’s a water-treatment plant. It’s everything we don’t have the money to maintain right in our front yards.

The elms may come down and the taxes may go up, and I look forward to another several decades with this historic landform at the edge of my front lawn. If the city budget is any indication, it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca