Couldn’t help feeling nostalgic while I was painting these: “Impeach.” using good old Times New Roman. Vertical lines first, then the curves, then the seraphs, just like I did so many times all those years ago. Although it’s more subtle than things like odors or music, muscle memory has a definite transformative effect on the mind, and I couldn’t help drifting back to those crazy days and long, lonely nights when I was first sacrificing my quiet, normal life for what I thought was something greater. Hell of a story actually… someday I’ll try to tell it.
As much as I’ve tried to mainstream such behavior, freeway signposting will probably always remain on the fringe, something I should’ve known from the start. The first two interview requests I got after launching Freewayblogger.com were, get this, The Mensa Society’s newsletter and High Times magazine. The first two people to send me pictures were a fifteen year old boy and a 93 year old woman. Yes, you read that right. The kid called himself “Atticus” and his sign was spray-painted on plain cardboard. I forget what it said, but it was quite large and readable and I think he had to transport it on his bicycle to get to the freeway. The woman went by the name “Granny D.” Her real name was Doris Haddock and possibly the most inspiring person I know.
When I first started putting up “Impeach” signs Granny D. wrote me asking if impeachment at that time was really such a good idea. There was an election coming relatively soon, the country would be even further divided and “President Cheney” sounded even worse then than it does now. I wrote back saying that the signs weren’t meant to actually bring about impeachment, which even then I knew was way beyond my feeble reach. Instead the signs were meant simply to put the word in front of people’s eyeballs: to do the job the media wasn’t. She wrote back with glowing approval, which meant a lot to me. And back then I didn’t even know who she was.
This time around the decision to start putting “Impeach.” signs on the freeway was a lot easier. I had some cardboard that was the right shape and figured “What the hell, let’s see how it looks…” So far I think it looks pretty good. God knows it’s easy enough to paint and post, and with American flags (now plentifully available at 99 Cent and Dollar Tree stores) it looks even better.
To be honest the idea of President Pence scares me even more than President Cheney did. Having a rapture-ready president in charge of the nuclear codes is practically the scariest thing I can think of, and theologically speaking, Mike Pence is little more than David Koresh with a haircut.
From the way things are shaping up I’m pretty sure we can get rid of Trump and Pence too. In fact, once we see just how deep Russia’s meddling was, we might be able to get rid of the whole damn clown show. We’ve just got to make some noise.
Granny D. passed away in 2010 at the age of one hundred, and I guess by now Atticus is well into adulthood. I can’t help thinking he’s a lawyer for the people somewhere down south… but the courtroom’s all black and white and he looks and sounds just like Gregory Peck. Anyway Atticus, thanks for helping me get things started all those years ago. Yours was the first of several thousand signs that were sent to me during the Bush years. Maybe, just maybe, we can do it again. If you’re reading this, drop me a line.
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