Brent Farlie wanted to share with me the deplorable condition of the asphalt in front of his house on Harding Avenue in east Napa.

“Looks like Swiss cheese,” he wrote. I should come out and take a look, then write about the mess. It’s time that the city’s negligence was exposed.

If Brent Farlie was expecting sympathy from me, he wrote to the wrong person.

You think your street is bad, Brent Farlie? I assure you mine is worse. Mine is a quilt of bad patch jobs. A contractor added the crowning touch last October. He trenched down the middle, then let the job sit unfinished all winter.

Could Mr. Farlie top that? I doubted it.

So I wrote to him and proposed a one-on-one competition. I’d drive his street, he’d drive mine. We’d see whose was worse.

That way I could write a column saying that I, not Brent Farlie, was the greater victim. Not that I feel sorry for myself. I just wanted to set the record straight.

A couple of days before our scheduled meeting, a very bad thing happened. Notices went up on my street saying parking would be prohibited for two days.

That cursed contractor, the one who tore up the street in October, was coming back to finish the job. My ace-in-the-hole, the rough trench down the middle, was about to be smoothed over.

We put off our meeting until Monday morning. When I drove down Brent’s street, I had to concede he had a gripe. Harding Avenue was nothing but bumps.

Brent turned out to be a friendly fellow. He lives in a small house that is cute as a button. In contrast, the pavement in front is littered with asphalt crumbs.

“That’s the street falling apart,” he said. “When the street sweeper comes out, he spreads the gravel out to the middle of the street.”

His block-long street is mostly without curbs, gutters and sidewalks, the legacy of having developed more than a half century ago while in the county.

He can do without the concrete niceties, he said. All he wants is decent paving. About the only time the city puts down an asphalt patch is when a water line breaks, he said.

It ticks Brent off that the city is creating a new redevelopment project to fix up Soscol Avenue, just a block away, and the county is spending millions to widen Jamieson Canyon Road to Solano County, while his street continues to crumble.

When he complained last fall to the city’s Public Works Department, he was told that indeed Harding was in “horrible” condition, but the city has no money to fix it.

Brent wondered if the city was playing favorites. “This is a working guy’s neighborhood,” he said. “You know and I know that other neighborhoods do better.”

With that, we got into my car, bounced down Harding to Imola, then headed to west Napa. On the way, I told Brent that the demographics of my street weren’t too shabby. Three medical doctors are among my neighbors. Still, my street is crap.

When we arrived, I apologized for the fresh paving down the center. It wasn’t always like this, I said. Until they had to install a bigger water line to serve Hidden Hills subdivision, we were totally Third World.

“This would be pretty nice for my motorcycle,” Brent said of the new asphalt strip.

We walked down the western edge, bordering a field ripe for a subdivision. Long sections were failing or had already failed. I proudly showed off my street’s shallow potholes.

Pretty bad, huh? “I can see it could get ugly here,” Brent agreed.

When we were done walking, I asked Brent for his verdict. Who’s got it worse?

Because Harding is one mass of patch jobs, his street is rougher to drive, Brent said. Yet, my street is no beauty contest winner.

“I think your street is certainly as bad as mine,” he said, perhaps diplomatically. “I’d say they’re both D’s working on an F.”

Thank you very much, Brent Farlie. This was confirmation that  although I suffer in silence with bad pavement, I suffer.

Brent has been much more vocal. Besides writing to me, he’s written to every member of the City Council (who do not write back, he notes) and published a letter to the editor.

“I honestly do not think they’ll ever do anything. I just want to turn the heat up on them,” he said.

In writing this column, I’m not trying to turn the heat up on anyone. All I want is martyrdom.

Kevin can be reached at 256-2217 or Napa Valley Register,  P.O. Box 150, Napa 94559 or kcourtney@napanews.com