Sign me in, please

     A friend who read the foregoing (Maine-ly Maine) suggested I look around our local area. She thought we might have our own examples of humor or wit in road or other signs.

     We do have one example I’ve seen of  … well, humor, I suppose, although of  an indirect, possibly unintentional sort. Actually, it may be more indicative of a bureaucratic mindset – there’s a form line that must be filled, and we’ll fill it, by golly – or, to give the author credit for wit, perhaps a smidgen with bit of irony larded with a dose of sarcasm.

     Along highways and state routes in recent years, departments of transportation have taken to posting signs identifying the rivers and streams those byways cross. As with the “Mousam River” sign to which I referred in Maine.

     Such tasks aren’t always cut and dried. Sometimes finding the names of those streams can be problematic. I’m reminded of a Reader’s Digest-type item I saw years ago about one such transportation official who wanted to identify a small stream somewhere in the Appalachian South. “What’s the name of that creek?” he asked a local. “That? That’s just the crick,” the local said. So, naturally, the sign that eventually went up over the stream read, “Crick Creek.”

     In Pennsylvania, there is a meaner or maybe supercilious streak in the bureaucracy, apparently.

     Route 402, which runs north from our home county of Monroe into neighbor Pike County, at one point crosses a fair-sized stream called the Bushkill Creek. The sign says so. Not far south of the crossing is a small stream that flows into the Bushkill a mile or so downstream from the 402 bridge. I can imagine the transportation guy asking around about the name of that stream. He must have run into some locals who either didn’t know its name or didn’t think it was any of his business, and probably told him so.

     But, see, there is a line that must be filled on the form. There is a requirement that a sign be placed identifying that stream for the casual or curious passerby. And there may even have been a comeuppance to be paid. So the wheels ground out the larger-than-usual sign that graces the stream to this day:

     “Unnamed Tributary to Bushkill Creek.”

     Oh ye of literal, and stubborn – sardonic? -- minds.