Everyone pretty much agrees: the potholes this year are AWFUL — worse than we can remember seeing in a long time. We can thank the extra harsh winter we had this year, complete with its repetitive freezing-then-thawing-then-freezing again cycles. But knowing why it happens doesn’t mean we’re not going to gripe about it. Especially when one of those huge holes takes out a tire or ball joint.
So until the Town and Village and New York State have a chance to get out and fill all those holes, we have to look for the positives in the pothole situation. Like how serpentining around them makes you feel like you’re the main character in Mario Kart. Or how you can have fun playing “Count the Potholes” with your kids as you drive them to school.
But here’s something neat that two of my readers actually alerted me to: the potholes on Main Street by Golden Boys are so deep that you can actually see down to the original brick pavers.
I reached out to Webster Town Historian Lynn Barton to see if she could provide some historical details, like how long ago it was that Main Street was paved with bricks. She believes the bricks were laid sometime in the 1920s, perhaps when the Blue Line Trolley was rumbling through town, but she can’t be certain. So those potholes could be revealing a hundred years of history.
If you get the Webster Herald, you’ll want to check it out next week; Lynn will be submitting a “brick” photo dated 1937. She also sent along the photo below, taken in 2015 in front of Barry’s Old School Irish when the Village was doing some work there. “Every time they need to dig up the road, we lose bricks,” she said.
You never know how and when local history will enrich our lives. We just have to look for it and appreciate it.
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(posted 3/28/2026)
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