Smoothing the way

Bob Clinton pauses for a moment while plowing snow from roads in Walker Township. Clinton has been maintaining these roads for more than 50 years. --Neoma Foreman/Special to the Daily Mail

Blistering heat or blowing blizzards, the roads have to be tended. Some of our public servants that do not receive a lot of recognition are the ones who care for our roads. Bob Clinton, the road grader operator for Walker Township, spent some long hours in the recent storm trying to get the grader going in the brutal cold, and getting the roads passable. This wasn't the first storm in which Clinton has dug the roadways out from under snow drifts -- he has been grading the roads since 1957. Slim Centers was running the road grader and had a heart attack; so Wilbur Pray walked across the road from his house to Clinton's house and asked him if he would run the grader for Walker Township. He's been doing it ever since.

Clinton said that snow is the biggest challenge because of the cold, and the deep drifts have too much weight. However, mud holds a close second. He experienced a lot of mud last summer while trying to keep ditches open and the grader out of the bottom of them. He knows how to handle the grader because there have been few times that he's had to call a tow truck to pull him out.

"When we used to build CART roads, I had to cut the brush by hand. Now we have bulldozers and better equipment," he said.

Another thing that is better now is that they no longer use creek gravel to surface the roads. The substance was always wet and chunky and he would have problems trying to spread it with the grader. Clumps of fescue and other grass and weeds along the road cause problems because he pulls up some when he blades along the road. "I have to wear them out by blading back and forth," he said.

The road graders have always had heaters, but in later years, the addition of air-conditioners has made the job more enjoyable as it not only keeps out the heat, but keeps the dust from the roads out as well.

Clinton said that normally he can travel all the roads in 14 hours, but after the past storm, he worked 13 hours in one day and quit at 9 p.m. and still wasn't done.

Over the past 50 years, Clinton has run five different road graders. First was a 212, next a 112, a Galion, Dresser, and now back to a Galion.

"Every time we get a different grader, I think this will be the last one I use. But I like to grade roads and do the best I can. I try to satisfy everyone, but some days I go out and everything falls into place and the next nothing grades right. It's kind of like farming--you not only have to deal with the condition of the soil but also the weather.

"Walker Township has been a great place to grade roads because the people are nice," Clinton said.

There are 16 townships in Vernon County. Walker Township alone has about 48 miles of roads.