I’ve been too busy to post any stories relating to my door to door search for lawnsigns but I should mention this one.
Yesterday I got an email from the Superintendent’s office telling me that a lawnsign along Piedmont Ave violated City lawnsign placement policy. It was on the wrong side of a telephone pole on public property. The City code was attached. A. I’ve been doing this for years and never ever been told that my signs violated city code (not that some of them haven’t) B. Up to now it was just routine for the City or County to uproot misplaced signs never to be seen again. C. Almost all my signs are on lawns and in legitimate locations. E. There are a couple County Board candidates Boyle and Keenan with scads of dubiously placed lawnsigns.
My complaint was purportedly forwarded to the School District by the City Clerk. I decided that I would go to Piedmont and add more of my signs to the enviornment and check to see how many of the half dozen I’d put up a couple weeks ago were still up. I thought I knew where this sign was. Getting it put up was fairly memorable.
I began my lawnsign campaign on Piedmont Avenue with Liam, since departed, because he was eager to see me interact with the public. I should add, and I hope Liam won’t mind, that Liam is gay and suffered terribly growing up in the Iron Range in the early 1990’s. He bravely said he was gay and was taunted mercilessly for it in school. The harassment didn’t stop until a sage Principal suggested that he tell kids he had only been kidding about being gay. Today that sage principal would almost certainly not ask a kid to lie.
I was intent to get signs up and our last house had a homeowner with strong and candid views. They were not views that much accorded with a Gay ex-San Franciscan who describes himself as a California Trotskyite. When I met this homeowner and quickly discovered that she was a devotee of Rush Limbaugh like pundits Liam backed far away. The homeowner and I could easily agree on the Red Plan but that may have been about it. Liam winced standing far away as the homeowner spewed non Trotskyite opinions about. Eventually I got an OK to put up my sign and she did specify that I put it “on the other side of the telephone pole.” I accommodated her wishes but someone eventually complained – after the signs had been altered.
I started out at the bottom of Piedmont and worked my way up the hill. After putting up a dozen more signs I ran across the sign in question and immediately understood why someone had complained. Taped all over my sign were hand made admonitions to vote against the levies. Long time readers will understand that this is not my position. I want the levies passed.
I knocked on the door and explained I had some reservations about having the no levy additions to my sign. That led to a friendly half hour discussion in which I conceded that I might not have been as forthright as I could be about my pro-levy stand. I find it hard to believe I hadn’t been all that candid and certainly the flyer I handed her spelled my views out even if I had soft pedled them when I was at her door.
I told her I would move the sign to the other side of the telephone pole to comply with the law but added that I would prefer to make her a no levy lawnsign rather than have my sign decorated with an off message subsign. I agreed with her up and down that the Red Plan was stupid. I elaborated on my failed lawsuit to stop the Red Plan. Nothing would assuage her save a long bout of good humored groveling on my part. She finally relented and told me I could take down the sign. She told me that she could make her own sign to oppose the levies. We shook hands and parted on friendly terms. I tossed my desecrated sign ingloriously into my car.
Now I’m honest again.
Oh yeah, As I was beating up the School Board she asked me if someone important hadn’t once said that “the law is an ass.” I did a quick Google Search and came up with a “Mr. Bumble” who apparently made that observation. He sounded like a character in a Charles Dixon’s novel. Ah yes, the anti-levy lady guessed, She thought it sounded like Dickens. It was. Its in Oliver Twist.
