Shooting Signs

 

Annie and I were driving down to visit our granddaughter, Harper.  Oh, and her parents, Andy and Madison too.

Anyway, as we were crossing the bridge into Arkansas I looked at the sign announcing that we were entering that state.  That sign is precisely in the middle of the bridge and at the other side of that bridge sits the little town of St. Francis.  Being a country boy I wasn’t surprised by the condition of the sign…until, that is, I realized what was behind it.

You see, the sign was riddled with bullet holes.  Sadly, that’s an all-too common sight along country roads.  This one, however, surprised me because the little town of St. Francis is RIGHT THERE, and some of the homes and other buildings would have been directly in the line of fire of the sign-shooter.

“Holy cow (or something like that),” I said to Annie.  “Some IDIOT thought that shooting at that sign would be so much fun that they didn’t even pay attention to the fact that there were PEOPLE in the line of fire!”

Annie shook her head, “Or maybe they didn’t care.”

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Now, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’ve done a lot of stupid things but, with the exception of a couple times, I never shot at a road sign.

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One of the times I shot a road sign was when we lived on a farm outside Centralia, Missouri.  I was getting ready to take J.B. (our second son) elk hunting in Colorado.  Some article I’d read suggested that a serious elk hunter should be able to hit a target the size of an elk’s chest from 400 yards.

Among the junk we’d found in the gulleys on the property were a couple signs somebody had stolen and someone else had tossed in the waterway.  I had previously called the highway department about some signs I’d found and the person I talked to acted like I was stupid for thinking they cared, so I nailed a stop sign to a tree and J.B. and I paced off the distance.

First at 100, then 200, 300, and finally 400 yards, and the loud “Whang!” the large caliber bullets made told me our shooting was up to par, even if our target was less edible than a rutted-out bull elk.

OK, so it was a road sign but it wasn’t on a road at the time.

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The other sign wasn’t actually a ROAD sign, unless you consider a railroad to be a road.

OK, I guess that was a dumb way to say that, but you get the idea.

Anyway, my cousin John and I used to go to Granny Corn’s every Saturday and use her house as a “base of operations” for many of our youthful adventures.  It wasn’t long before we started carrying our bb guns through the fields and wreaking havoc on the resident bird population.  Well, we did a lot more damage to their peace of mind than actually put them in much real danger.  We weren’t that good at shooting.  We moved up to .22 rifles when we were old enough, but .22 shells were expensive enough that we couldn’t waste them like we did ammo for the bb guns.

By this time we’d gotten to the point where we would walk miles at a time, usually following the railroad tracks.  There was an old dump beside the tracks where we use to blast bottles and cans with our bb guns, and now with our .22s, although a lot more judiciously.

I can’t speak for nowadays but, back then, there were signs along the tracks to let the engineers know when they were approaching a road crossing.  One in particular was old and rusty and shot to pieces, but you could still see the “X” on it from far enough away that we’d sometimes use it to prove how accurate our shooting was.  It was stupid and illegal and we shouldn’t have done it but, hey, we did, and it made a real cool, sound (“Whang!” remember?) when we did hit it.

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Come to think of it, there were two other times I used a road sign as a target, but you could probably lump them together into one crime.  I didn’t think of them before because there was no gun involved in the questionable activity.

Like many youngsters in our area at the time, I started picking peaches during the summer as soon as I was old enough.  I worked at Stewarts’ Orchard out on WW Highway north of Campbell, Missouri.  It was hot, sweaty, work and that peach fuzz that lends its name to the soft growth on a young man’s chin isn’t soft at all when it gets into sweaty areas of that same young man’s body.

Anyway, after a long day of channeling a teenager’s energy into acceptable hard work, we got dismissed in the evening ready to blow off some steam.  When the boss set us free my friends and I would drop 15 cents into their soda machine and grab a cold one for the road, then we’d hop into the car and head home.

Just north of the peach shed the road curves west where there is a warning sign announcing the next curve.  We would sometimes finish our sodas quickly and one day one of the boys riding with me though it would be neat to throw his empty bottle at it as we drove by.  He leaned out my car window and fired the heavy bottle at the sign with all his might.

He missed…that day, and the next, and the next, and the next.  Despite his reputation as a stud athlete, he NEVER hit the sign.

One day, as I drove the car, I finished my Mountain Dew and said, “Buy me a soda if I hit it?”

The jock quickly took the bet and, without changing my position in the driver’s seat, I lobbed the bottle over the car with my left hand (I’m a righty.)…and, believe it or not, hit the sign dead-center.

“Whang!”  I wouldn’t have been confused for an athlete by anybody in my school, but I had just done what the jock couldn’t.

Yeah, it felt good.

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The next day my friend anted up 15 cents for the soda he owed me and I bought it as we got off work.  I noisily expressed my pleasure with the cold Mountain Dew as we got to the curve.

I stuck my arm out the window with the empty bottle and jokingly said, “Double or nothing?”

My friend the jock yelled, “Done!”

I laughed and lobbed the bottle, knowing I would really only be losing one soda if I missed…but I didn’t.

“Whang!”  Another dead-center!

Yeah, it felt good.  Really, really good.

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The next day the jock paid me off with TWO Mountain Dews after work.  I finished the first one going into the curve and stuck the empty out the window.

“Wanna win your money back?”

His answer is unprintable here.  Suffice it to say, I was SO glad he didn’t bet me, because there is no way I could have ever hit that sign again…and I’ve never tried.

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But let’s go back to the Arkansas highway sign with the bullet holes in it.

As we drove toward our sweet Harper’s house, we noticed how many road signs had been ventilated by gun wielding idiots.  Yes I know I just admitted to damaging signs in my past and, yes it was stupid then and, yes it’s stupid now.  Need I add it’s also illegal and dangerous?  The St. Francis sign was not the only one that was in line with dwellings or businesses either.

Annie observed, “That’s our tax dollars they’re wasting.”

I agreed, “But how could we stop them?”

My wife has been watching a lot of TV since her recent emergency appendectomy has curtailed her work.  “We could call NCIS.”

I snorted, “Yeah, they would do a chemical analysis and figure out which company manufactured the ammo.”

She continued, “And do a computer search to locate all the stores around here that sell that ammo.”

I nodded, “Then search the store’s records to find out who all bought it.”

She smiled, “And find the bullets that ricocheted off the sign in the swamp and match them to the crime weapon.”

“And do it all within an hour,” I said.

“Or a half hour,” she corrected me.

“Less, counting commercials, because that’s when you get up to get a soda and pop popcorn.”

We broke into laughter at our self-perceived cleverness.

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I just hope nobody tells NCIS about my bottle-throwing episodes.

 

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