By Clyde

Everywhere you look there are signs of Christmas, some hidden, some absurd. Most atheistic and about all are plastic, headed for the landfill. People don’t stop to read them or need them, claiming “they ain’t seed them,” or they need to be bigger or with L.E.D. lights.

“Sign, sign, everywhere a sign, Blocking out the scenery, breakin’ my mind.” Sign clutter turns into litter out on Jake! Who picks it up? Julie. Not seeing-eye dogs; they don’t ever read the signs to pick up their own poop.

Make a homemade sign, no more. Yes, Latin from “signare” — to mark, sign or seal was used for sign boards in 1632. They were not invented by the local focal. A granite 3-mile post marker is in the garden at the Utzman-Chambers House. Sign-in and sign-out were first used in 1948, probably at a college dorm.

Who bothers to keep those records now and where do the sign-in sheets go at city hall? Speak up. Street signs tell us our whereabouts. Old ones were white on blue porcelain with cast iron poles and gave us a history lesson on the names of famous and infamous citizens of our old town. They all had a Salisbury connection — like Cemetery, Boundary, Division, Lloyd and Partee, or Cedar, Church, Bank or Corbin and Innes, the original surveyors. They are history we see daily. People who walked on these paths long before the homeless showed up, 900,000 new ones per year.

Before iPads, we depended on signs, safety signs and even bathroom signs. No signs might be more helpful to tourists who have lost their way. Remember when we would stop and ask “the way?” Where did all those old signs go? Well, ask the picker boys; any old enameled sign is worth ten times what it originally cost. A Musgo Gas sign recently sold at auction for $1.5 million. Gasoline, or as they say “petrol,” is extremely hot. It reminds us of the 16-cent a gallon gas war at Uncle Herbert’s Pump going on 70 years ago. Seems like only yesterday. Just another sign of the times. X-rays are a bad sign that something hurts. We thought I-85 signs were the road to the future, yeah, traffic jams and wrecks.

Dorothy Kilgallen watched as famous guests signed in on the What’s My Line? TV show. Artist’s signed work is more collectable, thank you! Pineapples, hard to get in winter, were a sign of true hospitality, together with a hostess serving some soothing sweet Southern sampling of sassafras side meat sandwich, simultaneously sipping shots of sarsaparilla symbolically seasonal selections, a signature of a sneaky Santa.

Ask a veteran what it means to sign-up vs. being drafted. With the radio beginning in 1926 we signed-off with Walter Cronkite on the 6 o’clock news. “And that’s the way it is.”

If you see one rapacious buzzard, something might be dead, but if you see a flock of buzzards, it’s a sure sign something is dead. Signs of the past are all around us, but without passionate protection, we may be losing our historic sites and museums.

Where do you keep the past? What sign would you pick to represent these present dismal times in a time capsule to be opened in the future if anyone is around? The sign ordinance, historic guidelines, zoning, state laws, ethics, politics and morals excluded, may hold you back from holding up a sign of your own, but don’t give up hope. Keep Christmas in your heart. Read Luke 2:12: “And this shall be a sign unto you, ye shall find the babe lying in a manger …”

Clyde is a Salisbury artist.