Signs That are Signs

All of last week was amazing.  The four days Dirt and I spent in Leavenworth taught me a lot and brought many new things into my life.  Our drive home was filled with deep, good, even, conversation between us.  Usually Dirt drives, Lanny yaps, but this trip was different, it was like having caramel sauce and whip cream on your brownie instead of just a brownie, which is good but… .

I most likely will share with you over the next few days,  many of the things I saw, learned and how I grew.  Not to mention the things Dirt and I learned and the fun we had when we took our girls up north to have a very grand time greeting a family from England.  But today, I’m just gonna be silly, well sorta.

  You know how you can drive around and see a great many things that tell you so much of your world?  Well I’ve seen a few in the Leavenworth neck of the woods, but I’m quite positive they are not exclusive to the area, it is just that because it isn’t an area I’m in all the time they were quite noticeable.

Back in October the Bowermans took Dirt and I up to Winthrop, WA where the Coulters had reserved a cabin for the three families, well the pa’s and ma’s of said framlies.  We took 97 out of CleElum, WA on over Blewett Pass.

At the north end of Blewett Pass you can turn left and go to Leavenworth or right and Hwy 2 will take you back to the rest of 97 and you can on up to Winthrop off of Hwy 153 and then Hwy 20. 

Well it was on that October trip, at that junction, that I first saw a sign that stuck in my head.  Cleverness with words on signs doesn’t necessarily help the person seeing the sign to know what you’ve got going on.

I saw this sign and wondered what an anopie was and what exactly an olumbia anopie might look like.  I think even if I had been searching for an accessory to my truck, and a friend told me to go to Columbia Canopies to get what I needed, I would have gone right past here.  For certainly I would not find a canopy where they sell olumbia anopies.

The next two signs that puzzled me over the weekend were in Leavenworth and alas I kept meaning to take a picture of them but I did not.  But you don’t need pictures of these to get my drift. 

I don’t remember the details of what Leavenworth was like back in the sixties when the entire town went all Bavarian to attract visitors and visiting money but now the little town is full of things that don’t make sense in a Bavarian town.  Trinket-y stuff that has nothing to do with Bavaria at any time of history and a lot more to do with the current western-pleasing factories of China.  But one shop’s sign stuck out as totally incongruous to everything including the era the shop was attempting to convey.  The name of the shop boldly proclaimed on the sign was Victorian Simplicity,

Really?  Victorian is simple?  Victorian was over done fluff and frills, excess and complication in everything including their so called purity, there was nothing about the Victorian style that says simple at all.  There was nothing about the drama and overstatement in every aspect of Victorian life, led by those who could afford to lead it, that would lend a person to call it simple.  It was an era of prosperity and the over indulgence that goes with times of such.  Unlike modern times of prosperity where we romanticize poverty and with great expense copy the seeming simplicity of it, there wasn’t even a false sense of simplicity in the Victorian style.

Any facsimile of simplicity found during the Victorian era was in enclaves of society that were attempting to be very counter culture, seemingly denying and protesting the prosperity of the times.  The Alcotts, Emersons and Thoreaus may have had some following in the American Victorian Era, but their brand of simplicity was not stylish, not the norm, until well after the nineteen-sixties and now full force in the current Green Era.  Ahhh yes, the era of worshiping Simplicity, the simplicity that encourages us to pay a third of a year’s salary on a car that proves we are so very, very simple, and go into debt for a diet that proves us to be worthy green citizens.

The third sign?  The third sign that is a sign?  Underneath the sign proclaiming the name of a burger joint was the bold statement that they had the towns best burgers.  “The town’s number one burger”  it said. 

I’m just certain I can believe that.  I’m just certain that I will find signs on the other ten burger joints that clearly state their standing, from the town’s number two burger joint on down to number eleven.  Oddly enough, the “number one” place for a burger had a consistently vacant parking lot.

That sign extracted a giggle from me every time I drove past it!  A good and clever reminder that we really can’t trust what we see written and proclaimed by man.

There is really only one thing I can trust, Dear Reader, only one thing in this crazy confused universe that I know is true and good and faithful.  God. 

And we know Him through His word.  The word that calls us to put our ideas of self preservation aside and grab hold of the abundant life He has for us. His abundance is much different than our definition of abundance.  Abundantly different.