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Steaming hot asphalt on a Charlestown street back in the day
By adamg on Sun, 07/22/2018 - 1:00pm
![Workers resurface High Street in Charlestown in 1947](https://www.universalhub.com/files/styles/main_image/public/images/2018/hottar.jpg?itok=hD6kwMsx)
After his appointment as rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Charlestown, the Rev. Wolcott Cutler took and collected more than 1,000 photos chronicling life in the neighborhood, including this shot, in October, 1947, of workers resurfacing High Street.
The collection is housed at the Charlestown branch of the BPL, which has posted copies of the images online.
Photo posted under this Creative Commons license.
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High Street in Charlestown
Oh, this wasn't one of those.
Sometime late 1947
Easy-peasy.
I Love The Smell Of Fresh Asphalt !
It brings me back to my early childhood — of my father taking us on a ride in the country on a warm, summer afternoon. There were new and interesting things to see along the way, and also different things to smell. Sweet smells of newly mown grass and fields of wildflowers, complex smells of farms, pungent smells of roadkill, delicate but distinctive smells of fresh lakes and pine forests.
And then, unexpectedly, we'd come to a stop in the middle of nowhere, where a crew was repaving the highway. Trucks! Paving machines!! Steam rollers!!! To a five-year-old, it was incredibly exciting! Watching it all as flagmen eventually signaled us through the construction and onto a newly paved lane of traffic. The highway had a new look and smooth feel; it even sounded different; and of course, it had the lingering fragrance of fresh asphalt.
Joys of a little boy— thrilled to be watching his father drive us to nowhere and back on a beautiful summer afternoon. That's what the smell of fresh asphalt means to me!
![IMAGE(http://www.universalhub.com/files/uhub215_0_0_1_1.png)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
![IMAGE(http://www.universalhub.com/files/uhub215_0_0_1_1.png)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
Here's a route my dad loved to drive (and, well, I love it too!) The road above isn't in Massachusetts— the next closest state is Vermont— but, if you keep following it, you will get to Boston. Can you GeoGuess it?
( if you GeoGiveUp, here is the answer )