If you happened to be passing through Asheboro, North Carolina on Wednesday morning, you might have caught an odd whiff on the breeze—nothing like the usual pine, wildflowers, or even the scent of someone’s breakfast biscuits. According to UPI, first responders temporarily closed Gold Hill Road between Old Liberty Road and Giles Chapel Road after an unconventional mishap left the pavement coated in a slick mixture of toothpaste and sawdust.
When Toothpaste Leaves the Bathroom and Hits the Open Road
Described by the Asheboro Police Department via social media and reported by both UPI and WXII12, the toothpaste didn’t make this a run-of-the-mill roadway spill. Crews arrived on the scene early Wednesday morning, facing what was, according to police, a “slippery mess.” Their exact words: “Spilled toothpaste mixed with sawdust may smell good, but it sure is slippery.” UPI highlights that sawdust—typically the solution for soaking up slick spills—was itself part of the problem here, turning the entire stretch into something like a minty-fresh slip-and-slide, albeit one not recommended for dental hygiene or safe driving.
WXII12 further documents that first responders and cleanup crews had their work cut out for them, as the mixture covered the road and required a multi-hour effort to remove. The police shut down Gold Hill Road in the early morning hours, and the all-clear came only after the mess had been safely dealt with—UPI notes the road was reopened on Wednesday afternoon.
Toothpaste, Sawdust, and a Burst of Bizarre
So, how do we end up with a toothpaste-and-sawdust jam on a country byway? The outlets don’t divulge whether this was the result of a rogue shipment, a warehouse accident, or the world’s least effective environmental art project in transit. What is clear is that the combined concoction wasn’t just an olfactory upgrade: as police and local press repeatedly warned, it created genuinely treacherous driving conditions. Slippery is an understatement—the kind of thing that might leave drivers doing an involuntary pirouette before their morning coffee hits.
It’s not every day you get a roadside hazard you could advertise as breath-freshening. Was this Asheboro’s accidental foray into avant-garde city planning, or simply a reminder that the strange sometimes overtakes the streets without warning? The facts, as WXII12 notes, make for an occupational hazard no driver’s manual covers: “beware unexpected oral hygiene emergencies.”
When Routine Routes Get a New Flavor
Buried amid the serious work of emergency crews and the routine hum of local life, it’s hard not to see a thread of irony running through this entire episode. Toothpaste exists to prevent things from sticking and to freshen what lingers. Toss it onto asphalt—particularly when mingled with sawdust—and, suddenly, nothing’s sticking except traffic, and everything else is at a standstill. Just another reminder that no commute is truly mundane or accident-proof, especially in a year that apparently also featured underwear-thieving cats and nimble emus wandering the countryside, as previously reported by UPI.
As Gold Hill Road reopened Wednesday afternoon and the last of the minty residue was washed away, drivers probably wondered how, if ever, this could repeat itself. Are we just a logistical hiccup away from a highway lined with bubble bath or a rain of unpopped popcorn kernels? Sure, it’s unlikely. But as recent events demonstrate, the highway of life—and North Carolina—has a taste for the unexpected. You do have to wonder: Who cleans up the metaphors afterward?
