As if Bakersfield wasn't ugly enough, this week they oiled the streets.
Starting on Monday, tanker trucks slowly moved through the neighborhood coating the streets with a layer of shiny black oil.
Why? Beats the hell out of me. I asked Jim why they did it and he said he thought it was to make the streets "look better". Well, it didn't work.
My theory is that the oil companies have recently seen gas prices drop and the quickest way to jack them back up is to lower the supply by dumping several million barrels on the streets of Bako. It's not like the locals would care.
Since oil doesn't dry, at least not right away, the end result is the cars are now spattered with it and everyone has black tire tread marks snaking across their driveways. And all the pollen and dirt and random trash that normally drifts through the neighborhood is now stuck and embedded in it.
The street looks like a lint trap.
I went online to try and figure out why on earth anyone would do this but haven't yet found an answer. Evidently this was, or may still be, common practice out in the sticks where they oil dirt roads for dust control.
While I suppose we would be considered "the sticks", we don't have dirt roads.
Or at least we didn't until they oiled them.
