House of Eratosthenes

That this blog is called “The Blog That Nobody Reads,” indicates that topics are selected and opinions are formed in the only honest way such things can be done: with complete apathy about who is expected to come along and read the resulting product. “Memo For File” means these things are recorded for my benefit and mine alone — gotta jot ’em down somewhere, and for whatever reason I don’t think the Palm Pilot is the right notebooking device so I’ve elected to use the blog instead. Your ability to subsequently come along and read the notes, while not a cause for concern, isn’t a pressing objective on my part. Whether it is worth your time to do so, is a question for you to decide, and you alone. But as is the case with everything else you can find while surfing, you might find it interesting.

Having said that, however, readers are entitled to some background information before I get into the meat of things. No sense deliberately confusing denizens of the “innernets.”

As is explained in the FAQ (Question #1), I’m not a California native. I’m not that carefree or jolly, I’m not that fashionable, I’m not that concerned about what others think, and I’m certainly not all that nice. I’m a native of the Pacific Northwest, birthplace of Starbuck’s and “grunge,” the nation’s capital of rainy weather, homeless people, serial killers, roadside diners and clamdigging. Rambo: First Blood was filmed there, for the gloomy effect afforded when you climb a not-all-that-tall foothill, and look down on the clouds. Ted Bundy dumped the bodies there, as did more than one serial killer who came after him.

In a valley of Valley Girls, I am a redneck. I’m a pariah even among the rednecks here, because most rednecks in California don’t have webbed feet.

Because the economy sucked ass so hard in the early nineties, I had to leave Seattle and move to Detroit when my mother had terminal brain cancer. In the fourteen months between that relocation and her death, I saw her three more times. Once when she could speak, that unfortunate Christmas where she no longer could, and once after she lapsed into the coma from which she would never awaken. Dad was dead-set against this move. She was not. By the time a special Christmas rolled around which we all knew would be her last, I made the first of what would would become a series of annual car trips home, having relocated again, fortunately, to where I am now. Eight hundred miles isn’t quite so foolish in a car…not compared to three times that much, from Detroit.

On the advice of friends who had been questioning what remained of my common-sense faculties, I made one trip from Sacramento to Seattle by plane, right before she died. Never again. Even without the personal things that were going on at the time, this was a thoroughly miserable trip, a raging pus-filled pain in the ass. Even before 9-11, I made the choice that eight hundred miles was a tad bit below the point-of-diminishing-return; henceforth, airplane no, car yes. I don’t care what people think about it. The ensuing decade-and-a-half of saddle-sores have done nothing to temper this feeling.

The point, dear reader, is not about my being batted around from one piece of the country to the other, “exert[ing] roughly the same amount of control over [my] destiny, as a pinball exerts over its direction as it tumbles through a machine,” or about the things that were left unsaid to a dying mother, coming to my conscious attention when it was far too late to say them. The point is the stretch: the 851 miles of I-5 between the Highway 50 junction in downtown Sacramento, and the Super 8 Motel in Lynden, Washington. It has become my more-or-less annual habit to Hoof It, spending the holidays with the relatives who are left up there. I find it relaxing. I know the people who run the roadside eateries and hotels — not on a first-name basis; to those with a memory up to the task, I’m nothing more than “that guy.” But I know them, and I know this road. I know it well, the way a trucker would know it.

And toward the end of the journey there is an interesting landmark. “That billboard.” Not too many Christmas travels had already been completed, before I started the habit of looking for it. It’s at the halfway point between Centralia and Chehalis, Washington. Last Thanksgiving, taking my young son with me, I made a mental note that I found it at Exit 72. And RoadsideAmerica.com has an article all about it.

The Right-Wing Uncle Sam billboard is in the city of Chehalis (but everybody thinks it’s in Centralia). I talked to the guys who run the Country Canopy & RV Center — they rent from the Hamilton Family. Sam is on their land. Since this Sam is somewhat conservative in his beliefs, ahem — he doesn’t draw respect like the original Uncle Sam in Troy, NY — this Sam’s critics respond with debris, paintballs sometimes. Sam’s days were assumed to be numbered when Alfred Hamilton died, but his son took over, cooking up more slogans to annoy Hilary Clinton.

You may be driving through a state where the politicians have rubbed elbows with Saddam Hussein, praised the non-existent accomplishments of Osama bin Laden to schoolchildren, and won elections with more votes than there are registered voters. But Chehalis’ Uncle Sam will remind you he’s keeping tabs on it all, right off the I-5.

The graphic on the billboard stays the same, at least since I first noticed the billboard while still a Washington resident and native. The lettering changes. And it’s different on the front than it is on the back. (First observed caption, on North side, noticed during motorcycle trip to Portland: “IF DUKAKIS BECOMES PRESIDENT, KEEP ONE HAND ON YOUR WALLET.”)

You can only read the North side when you’re headed South, and vice-versa. I have tried to read both on one sprint, and this is poorly-advised. If you want to read both you must either leave the freeway, adding miles and minutes to your itinerary, or resolve catch the back-side on the way back home. I have found it is much safer to opt for the latter. It gives me something to anticipate during a boring road trip. This is the region in which I was raised to eschew the notion of “instant gratification.”

The Alfred Hamilton referenced in the Roadside America blurb, passed away in 2004. His itinerary his here.

Alfred Hamilton, whose billboard emblazoned with conservative messages engaged drivers on Interstate 5 for decades, has died.

Hamilton, 84, suffered from Parkinson’s disease and cancer. He died Tuesday at his home in this southwestern Washington town.

His two-sided “Uncle Sam” billboard dates back to 1971. Over the years, it has carried a litany of messages aimed at politicians Hamilton didn’t like as well as homosexuals, Russia, abortion, communism, big government, the United Nations and gun control, to name a few.

“He was a fighter,” Sherryl Zurek, one of his daughters, told The (Centralia) Chronicle. “He loved a fight. He loved to argue or discuss.”
:
In 1971, then-state Attorney General Slade Gorton sued Hamilton under the Scenic Vista Act. The case was resolved eight years later in Hamilton’s favor.
:
“He stood about 6-3 or 6-4, and weighed 200 pounds or so,” Bradshaw said. “He gave you the feeling he was the kind of man you wouldn’t want to mess with.”

Hamilton’s wife died in 2001. He is survived by his sister, Betty; his children; and 12 grandchildren.

Free Republic thread under that article is here. Someone there called Time Is Now was kind enough to upload the obituary picture you see below.

It is chilling that the above-mentioned case dragged on for eight years. Of course I’d be saying that if there was a greater differential between Hamilton’s place on the spectrum, and my own. I swear, I would. I wish I could point to a real-world example of that.

But I don’t know of any left-wing RV park owners who are being sued for their left-wing new-age progressive “Eat The Rich” type billboard messages. I don’t know of anyone displaying a billboard that says “Clinton lied, nobody died,” and being taken to court because of the billboard. Nor do I anticipate such a test case will come to pass. My knowledge of free-speech issues involving outspoken liberals, just covers pompous asshole hippies who make jokes about bombs, and then start crying “civil liberties” when they get kicked off the flight. Nothing about billboards. Not to my personal knowledge. Certainly nothing that spans eight years, involving the state Attorney General.

Do let me know if something like that, an “Anti-Alfred-Hamilton” case, comes up, will you?

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Memo For File VIIThursday, June 22nd, 2006

Memo For File VII
Thursday, June 22nd, 2006