The "Painting the Line" Story

It was an ordinary day. Just leaving the high school where I work part-time in the summer doing the in-house printing. Recently the school district re-did one of the two intersections that lead to the school. Made it so you could only exit onto busy Rt. 501N by going to the right. No left turn and having to cross over oncoming traffic. Needless to say it was done for safety purposes as well as keeping the traffic flowing at a faster rate. Everyone must now leave by the other exit where there is a traffic light. Well, today they are painting some lines on the pavement of the new entrance to help keep you in the correct lane. The area is too small for a large line-painting truck, so they have to do it by hand. Made me wonder when they actually started painting lines on streets. Googled it and found that the first street lines where placed on "Dead Man's Curve" in Michigan along the Marquette–Negaunee Road in 1917. Had a hand-painted center line which was the first in the United States according to the Michigan Department of Transportation. I came across a few really neat street-painting line photos while on the web-site Pinterest. The first one has an electrical plug at the end of a double yellow line while the other has a zipper tab at the end of two lines that converge at the tab. Both are pretty neat. Then I also found this photo that was taken when road crews in Pennsylvania were repainting lines. They inadvertently laid a fresh coat of yellow paint over a dead raccoon. Allegedly unavoidable the crew said! The crews usually have a foreman who travels in another vehicle in front of the paint truck, but didn't the morning that the accident happened. After someone took a photo of it and reported it, the crew went back and cleared the animal from the road leaving a gap in the line. Wonder that doesn't happen more often with the amount of dead animals that you see on our highways. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

Dead man's curve in Michigan