Sightings

There's an overpass by the Fells that seems to be a nexus for social expression, a kind of public signboard. People aren't tagging it with your typical overpass grafiti. It's not the kind you look for on road trips to pass the time (like Burma Shave advertisements). They're personal and sometimes obscure messages, always on the same overpass, always facing the northbound traffic on I-93 just as it starts to wind its way through the Fells. The southbound traffic only gets to see an overpass, two miles further up the road, that's covered in American flags.

When I started my job, the message was a piece of pink posterboard with black hand lettering: "Welcome home, Mark."

Two months ago, it was a message spelled out in white plastic cups, mixed case, pushed into the diamond openings of the overpass link fence: "I [heart] Andrew."

Four weeks ago, it was some gibberish sequence of block letters, with red plastic cups.

This morning it was tempera paint on pieces of colored paper. It looked fragile. What I could catch at 70mph was, "Farewell and thank you, Lance Corporal Eddie Garvin," heavily abbreviated for quick scansion, surmounting the Purple Heart. There was a lot more, but it's going to be lost on me. It's stormed all day, today, so the rest of the proclamation will be beyond recognition by the time I drive into work tomorrow.

EDIT: 9:15am 10/12/2006 Some things are apparently stronger than they look. "Farewell and thank you. Our hero, Lance Corporal Eddie Garvin. Your smile and your humor will be missed. Semper Fi.