Pavement for Christmas

This morning I ran on my favourite route that circles rolling fields and Kenilworth Castle.  Part of the route follows a tiny back road that lines fields and the occasional farmhouse.  It’s the most pot-holed, rugged road in town—so that if you were to drive down it, you’d be going about 5 miles an hour. 

But today I turned off onto the road and followed it up the rise to the first farmhouse, and where the road usually turns into pot-hole dirt-land, it was smooth, paved perfection.  In front of the house there was a speed bump (in lieu of pot holes, I presume, to slow people down), and painted right on the road in front of the speed bump were the words “Happy Christmas Mr. Wade”.   So. Mr. Wade got his Christmas wish.  The rest of the road was paved, too—the entire two or three miles that stretched way back through fields and woods to where it ended at a final farm.  For the whole run I marveled at my ease.  No constantly dodging cavernous gaping holes and pools of mud.  And I wondered, who took on such a Christmas project? Who had made such an effort to make a handful of farmers happy?

That’s the spirit of Christmas, I found myself saying, and I slowed at each farmhouse  to study it like a detective.  Was it you?  In your little thatch hovel, was it you?