The local police are parking this truck with the No On Two sign in the back all over town. This picture is from Thursday evening, when it was parked at a spot on the courthouse square. I heard yesterday that the mayor told them they were “not allowed” to park it in front of the courthouse, but that’s not true. As long as they move it once every 24 hours and do that on their own time, there’s no ordinance forbidding a giant political sign in the back of a legally parked pick-up truck. Maybe he’ll write one.
I was pleased to hear that the mayor objects to the mobile truck-sign, because I think it’s a great idea and I dislike my mayor. We have history. Some time ago, I worked at a tiny post office about 30 miles from where he and I now live and work. During the period I was there, my now-mayor worked in that same town. This post office was too small to offer city delivery, so the now–mayor would walk down and get his business mail every day. He was always short with us, and he complained a lot.
The post office was red brick, and it had a built-in planter box out front, also red brick, between the building and the sidewalk. The planter ran most of the length of the (tiny) building, and ended at the entrance, which was a handicapped ramp. The postmaster, Ruth, was not a gardener and she had always left the planter bare. Part of my job was to maintain the front area, and sweep or shovel and salt the ramp. I’m a good gardener, so I eventually asked Ruth if I could put flowers in the planter.
I planted the box with bulbs and then annuals, for a succession of bloom. I like bright colors, I mix reds, and the box just baked in full afternoon sun, so this planter got so colorful it bordered on eccentric. I received a lot of compliments from people who aren’t serious gardeners, don’t read garden books and don’t know any better than to like, say, low splashes of bright orangey-yellow backed with something much bigger and gaudier in red. The praise only encouraged me to move the Overton window. Toward the end of my time there I was planting things like groupings of 4 foot tall orange Mexican sunflowers that practically looked the postal patrons right in the eye as they went up the handicapped ramp. I got along well with the postmistress, Ruth, and I really think I could have planted rows of Indian corn out there and she wouldn’t have objected. It wasn’t a big job, this garden. It took maybe ten minutes a day, spring and summer, and twenty dollars a year in bulbs and seed to keep the sidewalk garden looking like a box of crayons.
This was a a grim little town with a dying downtown. The post office flowers were the only bright spot in the whole miserable, run-down landscape. The one and only objection I ever heard over several years was from the man who is now the mayor in the larger city where I live. I was out dead-heading the gone-by tulips one day, and he said “my tax dollars at work” as he went up the ramp, with a nasty edge to his voice. I’ve never really forgiven him for that.
I saw the cops had the truck with the sign in the back parked this morning in the Wal-Mart parking lot when I went by there, which made me smile.