HOPEWELL, Va. — A Virginia man finally got action after a year of dodging a massive pothole.
All it took was a couple of trees.
Josh Anderson complained to city hall about the pothole in Hopewell, Virginia on numerous occasions, but it never got repaired.
"It was about a foot deep. It was maybe about that deep. If you hit it at a good speed, it would mess your car up," he said.
So he took matters into his own hands.
"I was leaving to go back to work, I hit the hole," Anderson said. "I backed up, filled the back of the truck with dirt, dumped it in there and stuck the plant in there."
But before he drove off, he took a couple pictures, posting it on a Facebook page for residents of Hopewell to post issues. Within minutes, the likes and comments on the pictures were adding up.
"I thought it was cute. Funny," said Blake Cox.
"It was funny. It was, um, a bunch of people making light of it," Anderson said.
Views on TikTok soon topped two million.
But the tree didn't last long after city workers removed it.
"I come back home from work and the tree was gone," Anderson said. "So I pulled up another tree and I planted it, put some lights on it."
"I thought it was Christmas in April, with the lights on it. It was really funny," said a Hopewell resident.
After the second tree went up, the city again took action.
"As many times as I went to ask to get it done and nothing's been done about it. And as soon as I make a TikTok and put it on their web page with a tree in it, within 24 hours, they had a crew out here fixing it," Anderson said.
"It took them a day to fix something that's been there for a long time," Cox said.
Many residents are now seeing the success of planting a tree in a pothole.
"I think we might see more trees planted around Hopewell out in the street," said resident Kevin Johnson.