Confessions of a Sign Hacker (Mudflats) [View All]

http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/confessions-of-a-sign-hacker/

I have a confession to make.

I was driving to work on Friday, approaching a familiar overpass on the Seward Highway, when I noticed a hand-painted sign that someone had put up so it would hang over traffic. I’ve seen signs on this overpasses before. Sometimes it’s a birthday greeting, sometimes a welcome home message. I even once saw a “No Blood for Oil” sign before the invasion of Iraq. This one looked like it had been painted on a white sheet. It was mostly red and blue….it….was….an…… Obama sign! I smiled as the car got close enough to read it. “Obama 4 Change” it said. But then as I got closer still, I realized that there was more. It continued, “2 Islamic Law -N- U.S.A.” Obama for change to Islamic Law in U.S.A.?? Argh!

I was outraged, not only at the sheer stupidity and misinformation in the content of the sign, but “-N-”?? There was plenty of space to write “IN”. And isn’t “-N-” supposed to mean ‘and’?

I’m glad I was in the passenger’s seat or I would have hit the guard rail. So spouse says to me, “Do you want to take a picture of it?” (must have been remembering our photo safari in Wasilla a couple weeks ago) I said no. It was too depressing. Then I noticed the car veering off at the next exit. “Where are we going?”, I ask. “We’re going back.” And so we did.

The plan? Not to take the sign down as I first thought, but to quickly and surgically remove the bottom half! Brilliant. Not only would the sign be correct in content, but the -N- and the rest of the nonsense would be relegated to the dust bin.

The procedure took about five minutes, as we discovered there were actually two identical signs, one facing north and one facing south. I present to you, dear Mudflatters, my trophies. No antlers or moose heads from this Alaskan hunt, but something even better.

The signs are down now, but they survived all the way through the morning and evening commute on Friday. I wonder if the original sign hangers got to enjoy the edited version…