I am admitting my criminal history... I have stolen several street signs. Government property. On several occasions. I still have them all in my possession, too. They hung on my college dorm room walls, and in my present life, I am trying to convince my husband of how good they would look hanging in our sunroom, along with my 50 or so lisence plates (all legally obtained, by the way).When I took street signs, I had some unspoken rules. I would NOT take a sign unless it had A) fallen off the pole or B) the whole thing (pole and all) was knocked over and C) I had at least one accomplice. I figure I was doing the DOT a favor by picking up their garbage. They hadn't fixed them or anything. So I was clearing the roads of potentially hazardous chunks of metal.
It all started with a handicapped parking sign. I was with two friends (who shall remain nameless so I do not incriminate them, although one is pictured in the photo, so...), and we were going to an Atlanta Knights hockey game. We were in the parking deck of the Omni (remember the Omni, anyone? It has since been imploded) when we happened across a handicapped space where the sign and pole were just laying on the ground. We picked up the sign, because I wanted to keep it. We took photos to document the crime (pretty dumb), and thus began my street sign collection. Once home, I took out the bolts that held it to the post.
After that, I got a sign naming two cross streets near my parents' house. The whole sign, pole and all, had somehow been uprooted. Luckily it was only a block away from home. The pole hung dangerously out my rear window as one of the aforementioned friends and I drove it home (I drove while he sat in the back, holding it steady). Then we removed it from the pole with my dad's allen wrenches, after taking incriminating photos, of course. When the sign was replaced, they put up a sign that had the wrong street name! I always wanted to steal that one too, since it was the wrong name and probably confused some people - but it never got knocked over, so I couldn't justify taking it.
I also accepted street signs as gifts. The other friend from above who will remain nameless was with somebody else who shall also remain nameless, and the two of them hit the jackpot: they saw a pole knocked down with, count 'em, SIX signs attached! They were so sweet to think of me :) and began to dismantle the signs with tools that one of them carried in his vehicle for some odd reason. At school the next day, in the parking lot, they proudly presented me with two Highway 41 signs, two arrow signs, and two directional signs (one said North and the other said South). You cannot even imagine my excitement. They had made my day! No photos of this since I received them at school and didn't have my camera with me (yes, these were the days before cell phone cameras; shoot, these were the days before cells phones, period!).
Another time, I got a stopsign and another set of street signs from Albany. The stop sign was HUGE - bigger than I thought it would be - so I was a little worried about that, but we would manage. The really cool part was that this sign labeled a miniscule little dirt path that was about 100 feet long - there was absolutely no reason on earth for the DOT to even bother with wasting tax dollars on a sign for it. It joined Radium Springs Road to a side street (for people who can't turn at the corner like normal, I guess) and was called The Circle. I thought it was so cool to have a sign that said The Circle... what an unconventional street name. Anyway, the sad part of this story is that I do not have these signs in my possession - they were left in the garage of the person who helped me steal them (he shall also remain nameless) who was my boyfriend at the time. The lady who was driving me back to my home in Atlanta freaked when I tried to put those huge signs in her car. So she made me leave them in Albany. And then we drove back to Atlanta where her purse was snatched outside a Winn-Dixie and she almost ran down a bag boy with her car (that's another story, though). All that to say: I lost some really cool signs, unfortunately. And I don't even have the photos to prove it. I had my camera with me but didn't take photos for some reason! Very unlike me.
Somewhere else along the lines I obtained a No Dumping sign (we wanted to hang it in the bathroom of my dorm in college but settled for putting it above our garbage can). I think somebody gifted me with that one, along with my No Parking at Any Time sign. I know that I didn't steal either of those myself.
I have one more contraband piece of DOT property that is actually not a street sign. This particular piece of the collection came from Athens, GA. In passing, I made the comment to my boyfriend at the time (Jesse - I can actually name him, as it would be impossible for him to be prosecuted for the crime at this point due to sad circumstances) that I wanted a big, orange construction barrel. I was not completely serious; I just thought it would be neat but not really feasible. But apparently he saw this as a challenge... and maybe it was some kind of macho guy thing, because we were with a friend of his at the time who was pretty gung-ho about the idea as well (and he will remain nameless, partly because I'm not 100% sure that I'm remembering his name correctly!). Anyway, I didn't really think they were going to do it. I mean, it was raining, dark, and if you've ever been up next to one of those barrels, you know that they are HUGE. Not to mention Jesse's mom had already expressed her disapproval at him corrupting me by taking me strawberry-stealing recently. But I guess she never found out, or she figured out that it was actually me that put her son up to the theft this time, because I don't remember her being irritated when they came back with the huge construction barrel in the back of his car (they'd left me and the other guy's girlfriend at home - how gallant/chivalrous of them), wrapped in a black bed sheet to conceal it and prevent it from getting mud all over the car. And again, I forgot to take a photo... sigh. I took the barrel home (I honestly don't remember how it fit in my car - Jesse's car had a hatchback-type tailgate, but mine was just a four-door sedan) and hosed it off in my parents' yard. Then I took it and put it in my dorm room for the rest of the semester - it made a handy step when getting out of my loft bed, but it took up so much space that I decided to take it home and not bring it back to school the next year. So I put it in the storage area under my parents' porch. As far as I know, it's still there... I mean, how would they discretely dispose of it?
So now you know about my criminal past. I think I've matured beyond this sign-stealing habit as I haven't obtained any since the construction barrel- which isn't even really a sign. I tell my husband that I knew he was the one because he was the only guy I ever dated who didn't steal government property with or for me... good, mature husband material. Yet I wonder if I had known him in the teen years... could I have convinced him to show his love for me by stealing me a streetsign???
***Unfortunate Update***
The construction barrel is not under my parents' porch, now a sunroom, any more. They actually threw it out one year on "dumpster day" - apparently a tradition in their neighborhood where all the households can get rid of random junk once a year. Where I live, a truck with a huge claw will come take anything and everything that you leave on the curb. But how sad for my construction barrel... yet another piece of the end of my childhood, gone. Well, at least I still have my street signs!!
