Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign

             In September of 2004, Dad and I took a cross-country drive.  The high water mark for our trip was the Gettysburg National Monument (which ironically has its own high water mark).  That is where we turned back and where the Union turned Lee and the Confederacy around.  Somewhere along the way, after noticing that some cars motoring along the amber waves of grain sported Bush or Kerry bumper stickers, we decided to take an extremely informal poll about the then upcoming election.  We would count the respective stickers and figure who would win that election by using a complicated algorithm; whoever had the most bumper stickers would win.  John Kerry left George W. Bush eating theoretical dust.  Well, it was Kerry that ended up being the dust eater that November.  But I suppose we should have known that.  After all, there were far more stickers for “Shit Happens.”

            This recent election I noticed far fewer bumper stickers.  A couple of “NObama”s, a Romney here and Obama/Biden there, her Mitt, there a Mitt, but not everywhere a Mitt, Mitt.  That being said, there were a lot of yard signs.  I’ve always wondered who puts up signs for a political candidate in their yard.  No one I can remember knowing ever has.  Do they get paid for that?  Do they have to pay for them?  Do those signs work or do they have to a placebo effect; allowing the supporter to feel like they’re helping when in fact they may just be just pissing of the gardener who has to move it and put it back every week?

            Trying to determine the outcome of an election by yard signage proved unreliable at best.  In the more affluent neighborhoods Romney signs, where there were any, took the day, but in the less affluent burgs, there really wasn’t a dearth of Obama placards that I could tell.  There were few signs at all.  Taking the lesson I learned from the great Shit Happens debacle of 2004, when voting on Tuesday, I probably should have just written in one of the names I saw on the most lawns over the past year; For Sale, Price Reduced, or Bank Owned.

            When we lived in Auburn there is an interchange at highway 80 and Bell Road that sees a lot of traffic because 80 is the only route through the Sierras that is open all year.  Understandably during elections political signs popped up like dandelions at each corner of this interchange.  Except for one.  On that corner, the owner of the land presumably, put up a sign that said, “No political signs.”  There was however a piece of cardboard one day that had scribble on it, “No Carpool.”  I don’t know if this was a statement, lament, or informational.  If I found the person who put it up, my only response would have probably been, "Shit Happens."