•September 9, 2015•

by Jerry Ginther
NP Guest Columnist

Scrubbing road oil from the sides of our cars and those old white walled tires was an annual, summertime job in our small, central Illinois town of Sullivan. Try as we may we could never avoid the inevitable; the day the road oil would come to our particular street or would be applied to a street on which we must drive. Everyone searched for new routes to get as close to their destinations as possible without having to drive on the black, stinky goop, only to discover their plan had been defeated. The city crews had cut off their escape route by beating them to the other road they had contrived to use.

On those hot, summer days the city and township crews were laying the oil on thick and covering it with a thin layer of sand. The sand, of course, was next to useless in keeping the oil off of anything, especially after a few cars had passed over it. However, we did learn a couple of minor, mitigating procedures. If we drove very slowly over the oiled surface, the tires didn’t throw the oil quite as high, and we could drive with the right two wheels on the shoulder where possible. The latter option wasn’t always available but utilized where practicable.

It seems that the older kids in the family were summoned to the task of road oil removal. As an incentive, we were told that the sooner we got at the chore the easier the removal would be. Maybe, but I don’t recall that we were allowed the option of testing that theory. My theory was a little different. Adults just wanted it off sooner rather than later. Detergents, kerosene, gasoline and other home remedies were employed for the project, but I don’t remember any of them really making the scrubbing process much easier. It was never a wipe on wipe off operation.      Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.