I don’t have a photo, but here’s why that gouge gave me fits.

Turning onto our road one morning—this was a few years ago—I encountered a ridge of gravel and debris running right down the middle, scraped there by a repair crew’s monster grader. I edged to the side of the road so the gravel wouldn’t punch hoes in the car’s underbelly and kept going. But 50 yards up from the culvert pipe for the creek, going around the bend, I failed to notice how close I was getting to the ditch. Suddenly the car was sliding toward oblivion.

It didn’t land upside down in the creek—a tree was in the way. So I didn’t go to heaven (if I had anything like that in mind, which I didn’t). The car at a steep slant, its left rear wheel lifted off the ground, I got the motor turned off. I fumbled and fumbled for the phone. I called my husband. He couldn’t hear me, but he said he was coming.

I had an awful time trying to climb out. The car door was too heavy. Finally, kicking off my silly shoes allowed me to brace myself properly, push up hard enough, and wriggle through the opening. I waited barefoot on the road in my swingy purple-and-orange go-to-town skirt till here came Paulson barreling toward me in the truck.

A little bit of the tree, we saw, was stuck fast to the car’s dented right side.

The cop was friendly. A tow truck took the car away. Somebody told us about previous accidents there and Paulson planted a stick. Some time later he put in a second, for the erosion.

And now they have those two buddies down around the bend in the video. Makeshift sticks fade, so he’ll have keep hiking down to spray on fresh coats of his fluorescent Rust-Oleum from Rocking R Hardware. No point in waiting for the hardhat honchos to come with their front-end loaders and rocks and wire caging.

People, if it’s not just some dumb little thing like a hole in a sheet, fix it.