Some of you remember these lyrics: “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign/Blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind/Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?” from a 1971 hit song that still gets radio airplay today.
That song has been continuously playing in my head while I’m on the road here in Idaho, where I have noticed a certain uniqueness to the signs guiding my travels.
In Gilroy I always enjoy reading the Baptist Church’s quote of the week on the church marquee, which offers such wisdom as: “Fear Is Faith Going In The Wrong Direction.”
Here in Idaho I see a church marquee that offers a little different take on faith, one perhaps unique to the gold-mining terrain along the Snake River that I am now crossing: “Faith Takes Sealed Caves And Makes Them Into Tunnels.”
Only in Idaho have I seen advertisements for “Fishing Gear, Used Guns, Touch Lamps,” all on one sign. Then came, “Buy Rite Auto Salvage. Bin Laden, You’re Next,” followed by “Jumper Cable Embroidery,” which really left me scratching my head.
As if the business signs on concrete poles sunk into cement are not enough, people even have signs mounted on little flatbed trailers in front yards with messages such as “Life Is A Series Of Readjustments,” “Honesty Is The Best Policy, After You’ve Tried Everything Else” and “I’d Give My Right Arm To Be Ambidextrous”
As I think about how much I rely on signs to find my way around, I try to imagine what it must have been like 200 years ago as Lewis and Clark first made their way across this countryside without benefit of a single sign.
Of course, the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery carried a sign of their own. As they traveled westward, it was the one and only female member of the group of 49 people (at the outset) that made peaceful travel possible. It was the presence of Sacagawea and her infant son Jean Baptiste that was a sign to all tribes that the expedition, though heavily armed, was not at war.
Going through Riggins (pop. 410) at the edge of Hell’s Canyon (at 5,500 feet, deeper than the Grand Canyon), surrounded by the Seven Devils Mountains, the signs inform me of its status as a whitewater capital. But it is the “Homemade Blackberry Cobbler” sign that gets me to pull over.
My waitress was born in Riggins and has lived there all her life; she tells me about the local tensions between the Nez Perce Indians and the white folks over salmon fishing rights. I feel like I have stepped into an episode of “Northern Exposure.”
At dinner that night, an Idahoan tells me, “When my kids were real young, we used to go visit relatives in San Jose and we would always stop in Gilroy at “Baha Burgers” on Monterey Street. For years they thought that “Baha Burgers” was the real name for Gilroy.
On my way out of town, I can’t resist parking illegally and jumping out to get a photograph of a huge billboard someone has put up proclaiming: “Jerry Jacobson Has Gone To Alaska Hoping For A Fish So Dumb It Doesn’t Know He Has A String Attached To The ‘Free Lunch’ Hidden Under His Hook.”
And my favorite sign as I leave Idaho? My vote goes to: ‘Pepi The Barn Goddess Roped Her Cowboy Come Say Bye.’
