There was a maple syrup spill on the highway.
The area around Exit 27 northbound shut down late Monday afternoon when a 42-gallon drum of maple syrup broke loose from a pickup truck and toppled onto the roadway, police said.
Nobody got hurt, but there was a LOT of anguish over the spill. Vermonters never cry over spilled milk, but they DO cry over spilled maple syrup.
"It's too bad to see someone lose so much perfectly good syrup.....It's depressing," said Newport, Vermont Fire Chief Jamie LeClair.
Unlike some spills you hear of on highways. the Great Vermont Maple Spill of '17 wasn't all that big a deal. After all, maple syrup isn't the most hazardous of substances out there.
Road crews had the whole thing cleaned up within 20 minutes and traffic, such as it is in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, was soon back to normal.
"A couple dozen pancakes could have absorbed it," said LeClair, the fire chief. (I am not making up these quotes.)
Besides, most of the snow poured onto snowbanks on the side of the road. Us Vermonters love sugar on snow. We pour maple syrup on fresh clean snow, or if none is available, crushed ice, and go to town.
Alas, the snow on the side of the road was dirty with road salt, dust and God knows what else, so there was no sugar on snow party at the scene of the crash.
Let's just hope the sugaring season this year, which starts soon, will yield a bumper crop to help make up for the tragedy in Newport.
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