First there was a whooshing sound. They spun around the street corner, a pair of tall machines with whirling skirts of brushes, and danced together in the intersection, before heading off in a new direction, leaving behind them a trail of asphalt newly cleaned and damp. The whooshing faded. A few minutes later, the whooshing resumed, and the two dancers returned from the other direction, trailing a third behind them. Once again they danced around each other in the intersection, covering the dance floor from corner to corner. Curtsy to your partner, and allemande left. Cleaning up the dregs of winter.
It’s spring in Minnesota. In the winter, we use lots of sand on our roads, and come spring, all that sand piles up in the gutters and clog up the storm sewers.
I was spending lunch today sitting in a park, reading a book in the sunshine. Then, from behind the corner house, came street sweepers. Here that refers to a machine that is driven down the road, as wide as a car and twice as tall. On the bottom are a series of brushes and spray nozzles that clean and polish the roads. Often, it takes multiple passes to gather and remove all the sand and gravel. So the street sweepers often travel in groups of two or more, and go over the same block more then one time. When they get to the end of the block, they make wide sweeping turns that allow them to clean the gutters, and to maneuver around each other. For some reason today, watching them, I got visions of dancers in some giant square dance. For machines this big, they sure are graceful.
