blacktop/macadam

[Millie Webb]

Incidentally, I had never heard the term "macadam" used before.  If I have
heard anything but "blacktop" used for the black, tarry road-making
substance, it has been just "playground" -- as in the school's playground
surface.  School playgrounds up North are routinely paved with blacktop, so
they actually hold painted lines for games, and do not turn into massive mud
fields in the Spring and Fall.  The material still is used extensively for
paving roads -- in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota anyway -- because it is
a relatively cheap way to smooth out a sometimes pocket-filled concrete
underlayment, and then still just smooth it over again with another layer,
when freeze/thaw cycles again decimate the road with potholes big enough to
lose your car in.  -- Millie

PS -- If it is not pronounced with almost equal stress on the first and last
syllables, then how it pronounced?  ("macadam", I mean)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark A Mandel" <mam at THEWORLD.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2002 2:16 PM
Subject: Re: blacktop/macadam


> I learned "blacktop" growing up in Westchester County, just north of
> NYC, and in NYC itself. To me the term was self-evident: there was the
> black street outside the house, whose surface got soft on very hot
> summer days. And I used the term recently without thinking about it in a
> song (http://world.std.com/~mam/filks/WhenCons.html), wrt the paving
> material of a driveway.
>
> -- Mark A. Mandel
>