Our Fire Department has a new sign (first posting and written in December, 2011). It appeared the other day as if dropped from space and frankly gives a little modernity to the Village for save some little blinky illuminated signs on the outskirts, there just aren't any. Today it is all black. A true monolith.
This must have looked like some black magic if it had appeared a while back in our village history. We are pretty sure the early settlers would have come across it with the same curiosity, fear and awe that the ape men did in 2001 A Space Odyssey when they ran smack into the obelisk. In taking a little tour today, we think that this sign is the only one in town that gives the time and temperature readable at a distance.
There was more of a bit of a howl in the Village regarding this sign. It was apparently donated but that somehow doesn't register - as in what part of donation isn't understood - but for better or worse there it is, and we know the time and temperature with a little holiday greeting tossed in to boot. There is of course a neon sign ordinance floating around and some have assigned this sign "neon" status. We want to rush out and buy a copy of the periodic table but what would be the sense in that. Just good money after bad. Alas, there is a building code and this monolith appears to have broken it seven ways from Sunday.
We have a memory of a sign sitting at the far end of a downtown street when I was growing up. It replaced the clock or was added to the clock at the old Peoples National Bank building in Bay City. It seemed to always be snowing this time of year and a clock face was out of the question and the little thermometer that hung outside Twentieth Century Cleaners on Main Street was out of the way and we always thought it was colder than it register or hotter depending on the season. It was a reassurance driving into town during a heavy snow to see that bank sign emerge from the flakes - a beacon as sure as the lighthouses that surround us.
There seems to be something uplifting about all this and in a year it will be hard to imagine the Village won't find it a centerpiece - a crown jewel of the new age. Now that it is dark, perhaps a generation from now, as it was surely built to last the ages, folks will wander by, stop and look in amazement, and gasp of the implications of "codes".
Crowds will gather - no doubt about it.
