about 2,500,000 of the books were acquired during the construction of the M6 Toll. The novels were pulped at a recycling firm in south Wales and used in the preparation of the top layer of the West Midlands motorway, according to building materials suppliers Tarmac. The pulp which helps hold the Tarmac and asphalt in place also acts as a sound absorber and is vital in the construction of roads.

Richard Beal, the company's project manager for the M6 Toll, said the books' absorbent qualities made them a vital ingredient in the construction of the country's first pay-as-you-go motorway.... for every mile of motorway approximately 45,000 books were needed.

In 1917, she was driving home at dusk after visiting a patient when a truck forced her off a narrow highway into the sand. It wasn’t the first time. The truck driver apparently had difficulty telling just where his half of the unmarked highway ended.

Later, while driving on another, newer highway, she noticed that the road had a definite middle joint where it had been widened from 8 feet to 16. The pronounced center ridge caused cars to stay on their own side. A center line painted down the middle would serve the same purpose, she decided.

Known for confidence and straight talk, she took her idea to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors and the Chamber of Commerce. They gave her a polite ear but nothing else.

She took direct action. She got down on her hands and knees and painted a 2-mile-long 4-inch-wide white stripe down the center of the road that passed in front of her house on Indio Boulevard.

She was sure that her example would illustrate the idea’s safety benefits, but change was slow to come. For seven years, she wrote letters and petitioned the county and state to adopt the white lines.

Finally, with the support of the Indio Women’s Club and the California Federation of Women’s Clubs — which had previously campaigned to add roadside markers and to preserve El Camino Real — she prevailed. In 1924, the Legislature authorized the State Highway Commission to paint center lines.

From Doc June’s idea sprang colors, stripes and other markings on streets and highways to enhance motoring safety. By the time she died in 1954, at 86, striping highways was commonplace across the country.