Yard Signs 2009: Yard’s Revenge

January 9, 2009 • 1:38 am • POSTED BY Jim Walls

Ah, the irony in this post will be layered on more thick than special sauce on a Schmitter. Regular readers will by now be well aware of my deep-seeded contempt for yard signs, which I’ve now touched on in not one but two posts in the still nascent stages of this blog. 

So imagine my surprise when I self-Googled my home on Google Street View and saw this:

That’s right: a landscaping contractor we hired to put in a walkway threw a sign up on my lawn advertising his services, and the Google van caught it. Now, I’m in the business, so of course I have nothing against companies trying to market their wares. But this common contractor practice has always seemed a bit presumptuous to me. After all, I’m paying them. When did I also agree to supply them with free media while they’re snaking my pipes? Wait, that came out wrong. Who’s editing this? Full disclosure though: the contractor here in question is a family friend, so I left the sign up untouched.

Wait, it gets better.

My wife and I were blessed with the birth of our second child this past Saturday. On Monday, while I was distracted by an endless war against dirty dishes and Pepto-pink onesies, this went up, courtesy of the grandparents:

Of course, it was the the good intentions of the grandmothers that kept me from scattering those cutesy cut-and-paste hearts all over the street. They tell me these signs will be up for a week. So I did the only thing I could: I put on my hat, and my gloves, and my barn coat. And I went outside, I braced myself against the biting January wind, and I kerned: