Great Goo-ga-mooga

Rod Wax.  That sounds like a great DJ name to me, but then again, every name in the world except for "Donald Rumsfeld" sounds like a terrific DJ name in my ears.

Well, you can't hear Rod on the radio, but you might find you have a handful of him. 

I should explain that.  You might not think of Titusville, Pennsylvania, as oil country, as you would Dallas and Bakersfield. However, in the 1850s, they were pumping lots of black gold out of the ground around Titusville, and the men who worked on the oil rigs were known far and wide as tough hands with tender hands. 

And why, you ask?  Because of our friend Rod Wax.

Oil rig pumps produce a gooey residuey substance around the rod that work like pistons up and down, and the oil rig hands soon found out that rubbing that goo on their hands made them softer than a baby's asterisk*, cured cuts, and had an overall salubrious effect on their skin.

And that rod wax, once purified and canned or jarred, is white petrolatum, sold in stores as Vaseline, and handy for a hundred and one jams and cuts and burns.

I inherited this ancient jar among the
ancient tools in my father's ancient
tool shed. It's great for keeping
parts of equipment moving.

A man named Robert Chesebrough was the guy who happened to be in the oil fields in 1859 and saw what nice hands the hands had, so he shouldered the burden of inventing the purification process and elbowed his way to the top of American commerce, gaining a foothold that had him arm in arm with others in the cosmetic business, until the Vaseline line was sold (handed off) to Unilever in 1987.

So there you have it, where we got yet another product that was accidentally discovered and has a marvelous accidental use!

Next week, let's talk about the first guy who thought to put a slice of cheese on a hamburger!


* I'm out of Vaseline jokes now