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Dark Spot

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Electricity is great. I’m officially spoiled!

Thanks to electricity we can stay up late and read after dark and go out to eat when we really should be in bed after a long day of exhausting manual labor.

I admit I’m hooked on this frantic, juiced existence.

But there had to be something more pure and truthful about an age when customers pushed open the store doors by hand and signs didn’t light up. For one thing, pre-electricity shopkeepers were spared the worry that a simple burned out connection would fundamentally change their message.

Or you can have it done MEDIUM well.
Or you can have it done MEDIUM well.

Maybe the old days were better.

A neon sign represents an everlasting commitment. Once you emblazon your name across the night sky, you have to be sure it remains fully and coherently lit. Otherwise a dignified title like Trail Baboon could become something perplexing, like ail boo .

When has a sign seemed inadvertently funny?

78 thoughts on “Dark Spot”

  1. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    This will be an “All Day Thinker” because I can’t think of one now, but I love ’em when I see ’em. Meanwhile, I yearn for the days of BurmaShave. We used to spend hours looking out of car windows for those on the way to Grandma’s house in Pipestone or Nevada, Ia, or on shopping trips to Sioux City.

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  2. About 1962 when I was relatively new to Minnesota, there as a fundamentalist church in Mound not far from where I went to work in my dad’s stuffed toy factory. In keeping with fundamentalist traditions, this church had an ugly, plain white building. They had a big sign on it, but something had happened to the letter “G” so that the church was identified as the “Assembly of Cod.”

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    1. Eleanor Arnason, the SF writer, is fond of cod as an animal (possibly also as an entree, though I don’t think I’ve seen her eat fish). I think she would say that a church that worships cod seems like a perfectly reasonable proposition in the peculiar realm of religion, especially for Icelanders. I’d agree, so long as lutefisk is not considered a sacrament.

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  3. One of our local convenience stores was advertising Cappuccino Night Crawlers for a while. I usually prefer my night crawlers to be less bitter and not as frothy.

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    1. One would also prefer one’s coffee to be less squirmy, especially on a groggy morning when it’s already hard to get cup to lip without spilling.

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  4. Good morning. The first unusual sign I can think of is a deer crossing sign with a deer figure on it that was modified by someone who added a red nose making it a Rudolf the Red Nosed Rain-deer crossing.

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  5. A local hardware store had something on their sign that read, “4th Generation Since 1928” (I don’t remember the precise year). Whatever actual year, it seemed an awfully long time for one generation to run the store; if the 4th generation could run the store for 80+ years, then surely the 5th generation would be around to see it into extra parts for your hover lawn mower. Made me wonder if there was a portrait in the basement of the shop with curious qualities.

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  7. Somewhere between here and Madison there’s a place that advertises “Cheese Taxidermy.” We’ve gotten miles and miles of entertainment out of speculating on the many ways in which cheese might be taxidermied.

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    2. That was Aves Taxidermy & Cheese, located on highway 65 south of I-94. On the road to River Falls. I noticed the last time I was on that road, though, that the building, or trailer, or whatever it is, now just says Aves Taxidermy. They seem to have forsaken the cheese. Not sure why – they got an awful lot of word-of-mouth for many years by being Aves Taxidermy and Cheese.

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  8. Let’s see. There was a law firm called M-Law that used to have a ‘Wacky Warnings’ contest annually. Here’s some of their past winners:
    http://www.mlaw.org/wwl/wackylabels.html
    And their president, Robert Dorigo Jones, wrote a book called, “Remove Child Before Folding: The 101 Stupidest, Silliest, and Wackiest Warning Labels Ever.”

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  9. If your sense of humor is a little dirty, there are countless signs (especially church marquise signs) on the internet that are funny. My sense of humor is filthy, so I’m not sure what messages might offend folks here, so I’ll not offer examples. Google searches will produce no shortage of salacious church messages. (The skeptic in me suspects many are set up and not generated innocently.)

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  10. Not a sign per se, but if you happen to be in the vicinity of Menominee, Wisconsin, home of Stout State University, on a weekend when parents are congregating, you can observe many plus-size parents wearing sweatshirts that proclaim them Stout. First time I saw one of those, it was away from Menominee and, until I figured it out, I had to wonder who would willingly choose that label.

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  11. From the Not sure whether to laugh or cry genre:
    One of my favorites showed up in an old “Butter Roll Bakery” down on West Broadway – I was so amazed that this old fashioned bakery was still there, and it finally closed this fall. A sign showed up in the window: “Copper has already been stolen.”

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  13. Oh,. oh, oh, Mr. Dale, I have one, and I even have it thanks to this very blog!!!!!

    A couple of years ago, the s&h trekked North to take him to camp in Cook, and on the way stopped for his first ever trip to Duluth, but more importantly, to meet Barb in Blackhoof and the goats!!! We had also determined to go to Cloquet for the excellent burger place described here (Clyde will know, I have forgotten by now, but could certainly drive right to it). We figured we would spend the night in Cloquet and head to Cook the next morning.

    We do not often vacation, so it never occurred to us that there would be no room in any of the inns of Cloquet. We stopped in the ice cream place associated with the burger place and determined we should go back to Duluth and try our luck there. While having our ice cream, and downpour ensued. We thought we would wait it out, but it soon became apparent that it was not going to let up any time soon, so we hit the road again, barely able to see through the rain.

    And there, like a red beacon, we saw proclaimed Steak Ape! Being mostly vegetarians ourselves, we had no idea (and in the downpour, could not really see) what this was meant to be. We were tired, we were wet, and we could not stop laughing.

    Neither of us are great cartoonists, or we surely would have created a gorilla barrelling along, holding out a raw rib eye by now.

    Barb later informed us that the Steak Escape is really nothing like as entertaining.

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  14. OT Liam update
    Molly: Since you have a day free from school, what do you hope to do today, Liam?
    Liam: Oh, I have so much work to do!
    Molly: Really? What work?
    Liam: Well, I have to play with these Legos. Then Daddy said he’d help me with a jigsaw puzzle. Then I have to work on my letters. Then I have to play with my trucks. And then I have to read a book. I have so much work to do!

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  15. Consumer Report always has a page where they report on funny labeling errors. In the latest issue they suggest the price of freedom can be high for a stove that is on sale. The ad for the stove indicates that it can be shipped to you for free if you pay $270 for the free shipping.

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  16. Hard to guess where, exactly, the communication went wrong, but down in Northfield there’s a wooded walking trail with signs posted that read, “Please keep dogs leashed and pick up their pieces.”

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    2. I don’t think Ash Burger syndrome is the same as Aushburger Syndrome, Clyde. You probably will be afflicted with some speech difficulties and may be tempted to do some cursing from eating burgers made from ash, but if you stop eating ash burgers you will probably return to normal.

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  18. I’ve got some of these in my photo files.

    Seen in a cafe: “If you’re grouchy, irritable, or just plain mean, there will be a $10 charge just for putting up with you.”

    And this from my favorite bookstore: “Unaccompanied children will be given an espresso and a free puppy.”

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  19. Two Harbors used to have Bacon Tavern
    Two signs in an antique shop in Superior years ago that I have not seen since:
    “Lovey to look art pretty hold, but if you break it, kick it under the counter.”
    “I don’t give a damn what your grandmother had.”

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  20. Just received an amusing email notification from Opportunity Partners (the agency that works on securing employment for #2son)

    Plan for Tomorrow…Today POSTPONED
    Due to unforeseen circumstances, Plan for Tomorrow, Today, our financial planning seminar originally scheduled for January 15, has been postponed. A new date will be announced soon.

    Looks like they need to do some planning.

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    1. I’ve seen a blackboard announcing that the “Meeting of the Psychic’s Association is Cancelled, Due to Unforeseen Circumstances.” But that was a photo on the internet. Do we have to accept it as authentic?

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      1. Disagree, I think Wolverine would be really handy to have on staff at a sushi restaurant. Beast, on the other hand, would shed on everything, though he’d be great with garnishes. Cyclops would overcook everything, nothing would be hot on the days that Iceman worked, and Gambit would get fired for exploding the food at rude customers. Emma Frost and Jean Grey would make you think you liked whatever you ordered, no matter how bad it actually was. Oh, crud, I really am a geek…

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        1. I’m just glad somebody knew what I was talking about….. although you won’t catch me at a sushi restaurant so don’t have to worry about Wolverine.

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  22. Here’s one of the moment: I had my wife shopping. I walked by a rack of calendars on sale. One hear the bottom caught my eye, with some of the letters partly hidden. I had to go back and read it carefully. My first reading was wrong; what it said was “First We Dream.”

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      1. First We Dream was the title of the calendar. Add a t in the right place, which my dumb old mind did on its own.

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        5. It was just the way my eye caught it with a bar of the rack over the place the T does not go. I think Dale planted the seed of a thought in my head.

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  23. When I was about 8, my grandparents moved to a tiny town in south Texas near Padre Island. This was long, long before “South Padre Island” was a tourist destination/vacation paradise. There was an endless beach, lots of shells, no buildings and a pier that stuck out into the ocean. At the end of the pier was a stop sign, yellow back then as I recall. It said STOP and below that, ALTO. Seemed unnecessary to me.

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    1. Thirty years ago a known poor contractor was the low bidder to regrade and resod the football field. He put a high mount down the center of the field, not the gentle slope from middle to edge as in the contract specs. The district did not pay the bill and ordered him to fix it. In their new specifications the superintendent added for the sod “green side up.”

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      1. Hahaha, at work, we were just talking about putting something like that in a note for the contractors on a project this spring 🙂 We want to get the letter out April 1….

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        1. Another one that happened about the same time: TH and SB are the same district. The Asst. Supt, from SB used to watch like a hawk anything TH got, afraid TH was getting ahead of SB on supplies. One day he asked the head janitor, Clyde (yes there’s another one), at THHS what was the stuff was he just got in. Clyde said Grass killer. Hear GRASS killer. The AS took some up to SB and told the janitor there it was weed killer and to spread on the front lawn of SBHS. That was damn good grass killer.

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  26. Just remembered this. I have a picture of it, too. Every year during Vikings Training Camp, they put up an official big official sign board saying “Media Excess Parking.”

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    1. Every month all ND state employees receive an e mail titled “monthly excess list”. It is from some office that keps track of state property, and the excess list is a list of things that the state wants to sell or has too much of. I sometimes wish it included other forms of State excess for us to read about, just to make life in the state system more interesting. Would the May Excess list look idfferent than the October Excess list?

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  27. OT: We here seem to be the very center of the flu epidemic and the shot does not seem to be working. So, here’s hoping my wife does not get it. The hospital here was (maybe still is) shipping people to other hospitals. It has no beds because of all the people they have admitted with flu issues.

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  29. http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&tbo=d&rlz=1C1AFAB_enUS453US453&biw=1280&bih=937&tbm=isch&tbnid=6Mnwzd0OOcv9wM:&imgrefurl=http://www.inspirational-quotes-short-funny-stuff.com/funny-signs.html&docid=ZwF1lvFyBZ_neM&imgurl=http://www.inspirational-quotes-short-funny-stuff.com/images/funny-signs-neon-signs-anals.jpg&w=500&h=375&ei=JxfuUP3CBMfcqQGIvIHAAg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=980&vpy=310&dur=560&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=154&ty=93&sig=101407449618035093871&page=1&tbnh=136&tbnw=213&start=0&ndsp=32&ved=1t:429,r:11,s:0,i:132

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  31. This all makes me think of Patricia Hampl’s description of life under the Schmidt Brewery sign in A Romantic Education. I don’t seem to have the book in the house, though, or I would share it – though most of you have read it, I’m sure.

    That was a sign continually plagued by vandals striving to extinguish every other letter in “Schmidt”.

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