This story out of California brought back a bad memory. A fire truck responding to a call in North Hollywood fell through the street when its front wheels broke through the pavement, which had been undermined by a sink hole. The same thing happened to the Ham family in Caldetas, Spain, in the spring of 1965.
We had driven from Paris to Caldetas, a beach town north of Barcelona, for a week-long villa rental. As we entered the town and headed to our villa in our 1964 Oldsmobile 98, the street caved in and our front wheels went through the pavement. With our front axle sitting on the pavement and our two wheels in holes in the asphalt, we contemplated what to do.
We were facing downhill, which made jacking the front-end up problematic, but that’s what we did, somehow. A few passersby helped put some wooden planks over the holes after we got the car jacked up and we just rolled over the holes and went on our way. The next day, on the way to the beach, I noticed that workers were out fixing the street.
