"There Are No Warnings, Only Signs"

It was about two weeks ago that I finished painting the road signs in the lake community where I live. Started on a fast tack with two coats of white back in mid-May. Then, it started raining for the next two months, and painting anything outside was next to impossible. As easy as rolling the white fence paint on was, two coats of black lettering was tedious, time-consuming, and required a steady painting hand. The black paint for the lettering took about 2 hours for each sign. I managed to stay at it, getting them done a section at a time --- the hill one day, over by the store a few days later. From thick mosquitoes (especially up on the Pine Hill section) and humidity to falling leaves and wind chills. Add in some unforeseen occurrences, a population that really doesn't volunteer much (nor, apparently, do we have many good painters) and you can see how it might lag on until mid-October.

The signs were originally my oldest brother's Eagle Scout project in the Boy Scouts, which happened almost 20 years ago now. Ever since, the family has done maintenance on the signs, and as I've gotten older, I have worked steadily to finish some of the remaining signs that never quite got done. At this point, there are 30 signs that mark both association-owned and town-owned roads. At right is a representative example of the street signs. They consist of pressure-treated 4x4 posts, crowned at the top, with 3-inch stencil street names routered down all four sides. They are then anchored in concrete about a foot to a foot-and-a-half down into the ground (or as far as you can dig without hitting a huge rock).

Over the years, there has been some vandalism to the signs. Mostly, though, that happened shortly after they were first put up in the early '90s by a group of teenagers who apparently resented easily identifiable street signs that aid police, fire department, delivery trucks, mail trucks, etc. It was just a rough element here that rebelled, probably mostly because it was my family that put them up. They have moved on. And apparently, either kids are more civic-minded these days... or, as the darker theory goes, they're too busy with sports, video games or "hooking up." I would like to think they see the value of the signs, and I hope they're appreciated as a kind of unifying theme for the lake community... a kind of functional artwork in themselves. It's important to foster a sense of pride, ownership, and duty around the lake. I'm not going to say that a few coats of paint can work miracles, but I believe it contributes.