Saturday, December 19, 2009

What is "olioscourge?"


Back in 1977, we had a correspondent at The Indianapolis News who specialized in writing about the tiny towns in suburbia.
She fell ill and it was determined we'd keep the series going by assigning these stories to reporters.
So, when my turn came, I got out the official state highway map and looked for someplace I'd never been. I settled on a spot on the map called Olio.
But when I got there - the intersection of 126th Street and Olio Road - I found there was no town. Just a couple of houses and a defunct auto repair shop. A big new suburban high school stood just down the road. So I ended up writing a piece about Olio being the town that wasn't there. And I called the people at the State Highway Department to let them know they had a non-existent town on their maps.
"Yeah, somebody calls us every now and then to tell us about a place that isn't there anymore," the PR guy said. "We'll take off of next year's map."
Sure enough, when the next year's official state highway map came out, there was no Olio.
Consequently, I can claim to have wiped a whole town off the map.
My coworkers suggested I could refer to myself as "the Scourge of Olio." I kinda liked the ring of it and decided to use it when the blogger.com software pressed me to choose a domain name.
So now you know.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

So, I think I am now living in what was once Olio. Would love to see that article!

The Oracle said...

You can probably track it down by calling The Indianapolis Star reference library. Try asking for Cathy Knapp and tell her John Flora sent you.
It ran under my byline in The Indianapolis News.