What did that sign say ?

I am sitting in the Newark NJ airport, trying to catch a flight to beat a monster snowstorm that is now blasting Washington DC. There must have been a global warming conference here in the east today to trigger such a massive snowstorm. That being said – and since I am near comatose after 5 days of internal company meetings I wanted to write a column on oddball signs I have seen over the years that are curious and sometimes hilarious.
Before the signs though I had to pass on something from a menu in a restaurant a friend took me to in Montreal where they summed up the wine selection with the curious phrase ”Our wines leave you with nothing to hope for”.
Menu’s are easy to fix, as are many other public postings so I find the more permanent the mistake the funnier it is. I had a friend whose grocery club card was mistakenly printed as belonging to Mr. Smoth when his name was Smith. I was with him once when the clerk said “thanks for shopping at Safeway Mr. Smoth” and after that everyone called him Mr. Smoth.
In my travels I often spot signs that don’t make much sense. I took my youngest daughter to Australia and we encountered several signs that were yellow diamond road signs warning us of danger. One was a “Please drive with care” sign that then stated the word “Ahead” and pictured three silhouette drawings on it. One was a man on a horse, the second was a Kangaroo hopping and the third was a Wombat that was the same size as the horse.
Another was a sign at a beach that was just the drawing of a man in swim trunks, under the wave line with a giant squid tangled around his legs. We ran from that beach. At the Sydney Zoo we saw a sign that read “Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty”
The last Australian oddity was a triangular warning sign that showed a man in a wheelchair on a steep downhill slope rapidly approaching a crocodile with open jaws. Do wheelchair bound people get eaten by Croc’s often enough to warrant a metal warning sign?
On another trip to Italy, I spotted in Florence a sign on a doctor’s office that proclaimed he was a “Specialist in Women and other diseases” – no kidding. Passing thru Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam a sign in an airport lounge read “Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar” – I kidded my Dutch friends about that many times.
In South Africa I took my oldest daughter plains game hunting and while still in the City of Johannesburg we would find that any nice establishment such as a theatre, restaurant or casino had a sign at the entry encouraging guests to check their handguns. There was usually a gun check desk where a nice lady would check your pistol for you while in the establishment. I took several pictures of my daughter as the gun check lady for her facebook page.
In the Pilansburg Game Park in Africa one stone monument read “Don’t feed the Lions” on one side of the marker and then on the reverse it stated “Toilet – Stay in your car”. Must be some bush trick to keep the lions away?
A few signs friends have sent me are equally odd. One from the Chelmsford UK area has a large road sign pointing to the right that tells you how to get to the “Secret Nuclear Bunker” on the A128 road. Another was a warning sign near an electric railway in Newcastle that said “Touching wires causes Instantaneous death + £200 fine” Death should be enough of a punishment, why add a 200 pound fine?
Other head scratching signs such as the one that reads “Parking for drive thru service only” that we saw in Arkansas, or the one on the road from Phoenix to Tucson that reads “Hitchhikers may be escaped Prisoners”. Can’t say my Mom didn’t warn me about hitchhikers but never knew she had a sign made. One in Florida - but should have been in Marin County was a normal yellow diamond sign of a man walking with a separate square yellow sign beneath it with the words ”High Pedestrian Area”
That’s the end of my strange sign collection. Back to hardball conservative politics next column I promise.