A Community Effort: The Yucatan Sign

In the coming harsh economic times (we haven't seen anything yet), people will have to start pulling together to make it.  Divided we fall is a true principle and this urge to scatter apart will not serve us well in trying times.  Because of growing difficulties in our little part of Houston County, there has been a conscious effort by those of us on this end of our road to start doing things to help each other.  So we've been exchanging home grown foods and the like, something that used to be common place in rural culture.  It is a good thing that has been lost in our profligate era of debt and materialism over the past few decades.

So what started this local change of behavior?  It started with a sign.

In the early 1990's, the local Yucatan Supper Club shut down and took their sign down.  That sign had been used as a way point by UPS, FedEx, and other delivery services for ages.  Some of us got together, led by my late mother to put up a sign on the corner of the crossroads as a replacement.  It was a simple design, with the added bonus of a flower box at the bottom. 

Over the years, it served us well, but age and weather caught up to it.  In recent years, all the stain had worn from it, with the wooden letters blending into the boards and beginning to fall apart.  We often talked about repainting it, but never got around to it.

A deck project changed that, with leftover stain inspiring two of our neighbors to get moving on the long talked about restoration.  The sign was dismantled, new letters purchased, flowers planted, and leftover paint used to do most of the painting.  Donations and labor were contributed by Mern Flatten, Randy Roland, the Rykhus family, my dad and me.  On August 24th, we bolted the sign back up: