Destruction Construction Dream

I find a perfectly good street in a typical American suburban neighborhood to dig up.

I take to the asphalt with a geologist's handpick, the kind with the smooth hard-leather handle. The asphalt sticks in some places more than others making it impossible to pull back the entire street like one would bedcovers, although I do try. It is much easier, I find, if I begin at the side of the street - the seam where asphalt meets the concrete curb - and work towards the middle. I chip at it. The asphalt is about two inches thick and comes away from the handpick in large chunks. Underneath the asphalt is a mix of gravel and sand. I brush the gravel away. Beneath that layer, adjusting my eyes to the dark, is a ten-foot deep system of wooden beams, cross-sections, stilt-like columns, impossibly suspending and supporting the gravel layer and the asphalt. The space in between is black, empty space.

I wonder why the street would have been built this way. Is there some underground stream of water they attempted to avoid? Or, rather, is this a drainage system? Conversely, were the houses built too high and the street had to be raised to render it practical? I wonder if the hollow street gives off a percussive gourd-like sound when cars pass over it.

I dig and dig. Rising and surveying my work, I see that I have made a two-foot wide trench along the side of half of the street. The holes extend into the street at various points where the asphalt had given way a little easier.

The neighbors are nice enough, although I try to hide my secret that I am not a roadworker or construction person. I'm simply digging up their street. I have some excuse - some good enough lie - and tell them the holes will be filled by the next morning. The neighbors bring me something to drink. They watch my dog, who is acting remarkably well-behaved, despite a minor spat with one of the neighborhood dogs.

But now I also have second thoughts. The street is wrecked. I have no material with which to fill the holes. Cars could fall into the empty space below the street. I think that I should at least leave some traffic cones, so that the neighbors don't drive their cars into the underground cavern. Since I'm unequipped for serious road construction work - since I am a philosophy professor - I have no traffic cones. I call my dog. I decide to leave immediately and quietly, passing up invitations to dine with the neighbors.

I make sure when I drive away, dog in the passenger seat, that I follow streets that will keep me as far as possible from the neighborhood street. The evening sun is reflected through the streets in orange beams from countless window panes.