Asphalt

Matt Barnes, 23, of Westminster is coming off the best season of his career. Now he is preparing for next season, which will take him to a new level of stock car racing.After four years of racing in the four-cylinder stock division on the clay ovals at Trail-Way, Potomac and Lincoln speedways, Barnes is anxious to move onto asphalt racing with NASCAR.In January, Barnes plans on joining his older brother, Steve, at Daytona International Speedway for the rookie evaluation that's required for the Goody's Dash Series.

The local trucker who police say was driving the tanker that leaked a 40-mile ribbon of roofing asphalt onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike last week, snarling holiday traffic and damaging hundreds of cars, has been issued two tickets. George Delaney, 50, of Glen Burnie, received citations from Pennsylvania State Police for failure to secure a load and failure to obey a state trooper. The trucking company, MTS Express LLC of Stevensville, has placed Delaney on administrative leave and impounded the truck.

Someone stole a $1,875 plate tamper from a truck parked in the 8100 block of Kramer Court sometime between 9 p.m. Sunday and 6:30 a.m. Monday, county police said.The truck belongs to the Reliable Contracting Co., located in the first block of Churchview Road in Millersville. John Evans, who lives at the address on Kramer Court, told police a plate tamper is used to flatten asphalt and is extremely heavy.Police have no suspects in the case.

Brandi Denae Kilmartin and John Henry Darney III are to be wed Nov. 18 in Cancun, Mexico. The grew up in Kingsville. The bride to be is a paralegal for an insurance company and the prospective groom is an estimator for an asphalt company.

The local trucker who police say was driving the tanker that leaked a 40-mile ribbon of roofing asphalt onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike last week, snarling holiday traffic and damaging hundreds of cars, has been issued two tickets. George Delaney, 50, of Glen Burnie, received citations from Pennsylvania State Police for failure to secure a load and failure to obey a state trooper. The trucking company, MTS Express LLC of Stevensville, has placed Delaney on administrative leave and impounded the truck.

"The Tradesmen: Making an Art of Work" is a potent grass-roots documentary — and it's all the stronger because its leaves of grass poke up through the asphalt. Writer-director-editor Richard Yeagley salutes the virtuoso craft, practical intelligence and fraternal cheer of Maryland's honest tradesmen without prettifying their hard work or playing down the costs it exacts on bodies and souls. He weaves vignettes of (mostly) men on the job into a lament for the growing sociopolitical bias against blue-collar workers.

A truck carrying asphalt overturned yesterday, spilling it contents onto railroad tracks near Sykesville, state police said.The noon accident, near Route 97 and Hoods Mill Road, caused no delays in train service, a spokesman for CSX Transportation Inc. said.A police report was unavailable, and it was unknown whether the truck driver suffered injuries. State police could not provide the driver's name.Don Brannan, the owner and operator of Carroll County Cab, said he saw the truck as it lay on its side near the embankment just before the train tracks.

David Michael Byrnes, 43, former operations manager for a Baltimore asphalt company, died of lung cancer yesterday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center.Mr. Byrnes had retired from his job at E. Stewart Mitchell Asphalt Inc. in October because of illness.A mass of Christian burial will be offered at 10 a.m. Wednesday at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, 5502 York Road in Govans.Mr. Byrnes lived in the Cedarcroft section of north Baltimore. A son of the late Baltimore Supreme Bench Judge Joseph R. Byrnes, he was a lifelong resident of the city.

Lorraine S. Lambert, who was co-owner of an asphalt company and worked as a benefits manager at a hospital, died Saturday of cancer at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Mount Washington resident was 74. Born Lorraine Stiegler in Baltimore and raised on North Linwood Avenue, she was a 1947 Patterson Park High School graduate. She was the administrative assistant at the Baltimore Asphalt Paving Co. and later co-owned Lambert Paving Co. in Glen Burnie with her husband, Louis Lambert.

Miller Asphalt Products Inc. in Finksburg is operating according to state regulations and likely will be allowed to continue treating contaminated soil, Maryland Department of the Environment officials said last night.Ten people attended a public information meeting at the Reese Fireman's Building to discuss the company's application for an oil operations permit. Several asked questions about the plant operation and how it's regulated.The company, on Dede Road, has been treating contaminated soil for two years.

The right, northbound lane of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, from Interstate 195 to the Baltimore Beltway, near BWI Marshall Airport, will be closed through Monday morning for repair work, according to state highway officials. Crews will close the northbound lane for concrete and asphalt patching, as part of a $12.5 million widening project, adding a third lane in each direction of MD 295, Maryland State Highway Administration officials said. The lane is scheduled to reopen no later than 5 a.m. Monday, SHA officials said.

"The Tradesmen: Making an Art of Work" is a potent grass-roots documentary — and it's all the stronger because its leaves of grass poke up through the asphalt. Writer-director-editor Richard Yeagley salutes the virtuoso craft, practical intelligence and fraternal cheer of Maryland's honest tradesmen without prettifying their hard work or playing down the costs it exacts on bodies and souls. He weaves vignettes of (mostly) men on the job into a lament for the growing sociopolitical bias against blue-collar workers.

Maxine Taylor thought she was being "green" by using wood chips instead of asphalt for a driveway on her woodsy front yard in Butchers Hill. The chips happen to let rainfall soak through into the ground, stopping a little of the storm-water pollution that's plaguing Baltimore's harbor. But instead of winning praise from a City Hall officially committed to a "cleaner, greener Baltimore," Taylor was cited for violating the city's building and zoning codes with her woody driveway.

Jos. A. Bank reports increased Q1 earnings Jos. A. Bank men's clothing store said late Tuesday that fiscal first-quarter earnings increased as people continued to buy its suits and other products despite the recession. The Hampstead-based company reported net income of 62 cents per share, or $11.5 million, compared to 53 cents per share, or $9.8 million, the same period a year ago. Comparable store sales, or those at stores open at least a year, increased 4.3 percent. Internet and catalog sales increased 12.1 percent.

A man who had applied for a job at a South Baltimore asphalt company returned yesterday morning and shot a supervisor in the leg, city police said. After the shooting, which occurred at a factory in the Curtis Bay neighborhood, the man drove to his house and fatally shot himself, police said. According to authorities, the shooting stemmed from a dispute over a minor car accident last week in the company's parking lot. Police said they responded to the Seaboard Asphalt Products Co. about 9:20 a.m. for a report of a shooting.

It's time to fess up. One of my very favorite places to watch trains is the Sisson Street Bridge, which received low marks in the safety ratings scores published in this newspaper this week. Is it the amusement park-like shake and thrill I get when a auto or truck passes over its deck? Is it the 1890s ironwork that makes this span seem trussed up with oversized Tinkertoys?

Henry J. Bauer Sr., retired vice president of E. Stewart Mitchell Asphalt Inc., a Baltimore-based distributor of liquid asphalt, died of pancreatic cancer Thursday at his home in Ocean Pines. He was 74. Mr. Bauer was born and raised on Pelham Avenue in Northeast Baltimore and graduated in 1947 from Mount St. Joseph High School in Irvington, where he had been an outstanding baseball catcher. His athletic prowess earned him a berth with a minor league team of the Philadelphia Athletics organization from 1947 to 1948.

When workers began drawing orange lines on the cobblestones outside her shop in Fells Point on Monday, Carn Cahoon was delighted.But her delight soon turned to dismay. Instead of repairing the cobblestones, she said, the crew was getting ready to cover them with asphalt."Cobblestones are what give Fells Point its charm," she said. "People don't come here to see blacktop."Ms. Cahoon is the manager of Beadworks, one of several storefronts that line the 900 block of Ann St. It's a visual gateway to the Fells Point historic district for thousands who arrive by water taxi.

THE ASPHALT PATH CARVED a wide swath around the Todt Hill apartments on Staten Island, N.Y. Built as public housing in the early 1950s for young postwar families, the five buildings, each five stories high, were squeezed into one square block, accessed from the street by this path. I walked to first grade by myself down that path and called up to my mother from it when I got all A's on my report card and couldn't wait to tell her. I walked my little brother down to the playground at the bottom and once waited there with him when he stuck his head through the wrought-iron fence surrounding it and had to be rescued by firefighters.