ELKHART -- You won't hear any cross words out of Janet Randall stemming from the well-worn roadway in front of her State Street home.
"I like the bricks," she said, standing outside the home of her friend, Toni Brayton, who lives one block over on Division Street, also a brick street. "It just adds to the neighborhood."
They're bumpy to drive on and, when wet, can be extra slick. Then there's the age issue. Many are so old that they dip and sag in spots, casualties of caved-in sewer lines, perhaps, or settling earth below.
Don't mess with the few remaining brick streets in Elkhart, Goshen and Nappanee, though. They may have their faults, but their many proponents like them just fine. To pour a layer of asphalt on top of them -- the fate of most other brick roads here over the years -- would be blasphemy.
"If other streets were as rough as Sixth ... people would moan and complain and it would be repaved," said John Hertzler, who lives along Sixth Street in Goshen, one of the few remaining brick streets there. "But because it's a brick street, we accept the way it is."
Even Brayton -- so frustrated over stymied efforts to mend the roughest spots of Division and State that she wouldn't complain if they were paved -- acknowledges the rustic charm of brick. As head of the State Division Neighborhood Association, where she and Randall live just east of Elkhart's city center, she's lobbied long and hard for fixes to the two streets.
"Sometimes I'll drive through another neighborhood and I'll be enjoying the nice houses and then it just kind of hits me that something's wrong," she said. That something? The lack of character that brick streets offer.
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Brick was the material of choice for street construction for a time, through the 1920s and up until World War II, according to Marty Morgan, the city of Elkhart's street commissioner. Randall, who's lived on Division Street for 63 years, remembers when Elkhart's Prairie Street, among many others, was brick.
Bricks, however durable they are, though, have to be laid by hand, one-by-one, pumping up the initial cost. Asphalt and concrete, by contrast, are cheaper and smoother and they ultimately emerged as street builders' favored materials.
Thus, the dilemma these days becomes how to preserve and maintain the handful of aging brick streets that remain without breaking the bank. Though the brick itself has withstood the test of time, Elkhart's brick streets are dotted with sagging valleys here and there -- one of Brayton's key gripes -- that can make for a particularly bouncy ride.
Morgan fears the dips may be indicative of more serious problems underneath that would require extensive repair work. Brayton, meanwhile, lamenting failed attempts to secure grant funds over the years to fix Division and State, says the cost of redoing brick roads is astronomical.
"I'm kind of at the point that I'll take whatever I can get," Brayton said. If that means pouring asphalt over State and Division -- located in one of Elkhart's oldest neighborhoods -- and adding a few brick fluorishes as a reminder of days of yore, so be it.
It probably won't be that easy, though.
The Elkhart Historical and Cultural Preservation Commission would "strenuously object" to moves to pave State and Division, said Doug Mulvaney, who heads the body. Since the neighborhood around the two streets is a historic district, the commission has final say on what sort of fixes the roads get.
Likewise, Hertzler suspects his Sixth Street neighbors in Goshen would scream bloody murder if anyone moved to pave the brick there.
Brick street defenders are so adamant "for the same reason we like the oak trees or the maple trees, I guess," he said. "We wouldn't want them all cut down either."
NOT MUCH BRICK LEFT
It doesn't take long to reel off the names of the streets in Elkhart County where brick remains.
In Elkhart, there are State and Division streets east of the city's center, Tyler Street north of the downtown railroad station and Second Street south of Martin Luther King Drive, among a handful of other spots.
In Goshen, City Engineer Mary Cripe identifies three brick segments -- Sixth Street south of Purl Street, Douglas Street east of Main Street and Madison Street west of Third Street. That's just a bit over a half a mile out of 125.33 miles of city street in all.
In Nappanee, brick is limited to just one street dotted with stately old homes and listed on the National Register of Historic Places -- Madison Street between Marion and Market streets.