Bumper Stickers In My Neighborhood

What does it mean when the same car has these two stickers (not on the bumper either--on the body of the car, along with about a dozen others)?









AND







Hmmm. Could it be that this car owner is espousing a campaign of prevention, not prohibition to reduce the occurrence of abortions? This hints of a more nuanced thinker than is usually identifiable by the presence of multiple bumper stickers. Perhaps I need to meet this person?

More Bumper Stickers

So, yesterday, I spotted a real jalopy in the parking lot at the grocery store. All four hubcaps were gone, and the wheel wells had rusted through. The back bumper had sagged from it's proper position, looking like a overly-burdened diaper on a toddler. One of the rear lights had been broken, and the whole car looked dingy, tired and old.

Of course, it did have a bumper sticker on it:





















Which just goes to show you that the poor sod probably doesn't have much treasure in heaven either.

Car Decor Seen In My Neighborhood

I'm sure you have seen the Christian fish:
















And you've probably seen the Secular Humanist fish:










But have you seen the Jewish fish?



















Can lutefisk be far behind? I guess not.

Bumper Stickers To Challenge Assumptions

So. I was filling my gas tank at the SuperAmerica(TM) and a very old car pulled through. It was somehow squat, as if it were wider than it was tall, and a dingy maroon. The kid of color of maroon that inexplicably I associate wtih Denny's "early bird" dinners at 4:30, and inland Florida concrete housing. The driver was also short, and elderly looking. His glasses were wider than they were tall, but not in a Samuel L. Jackson kind of way. More like they had stopped growing up and started growing out. Given that this is winter time, there was no way that I actually saw what he was wearing, but I have a distinct recollection of a short sleeved cotton business shirt and plaid Sans-A-Belt slacks.

That last may be because this is Saint Paul, after all, and a surprisingly large percentage of our work population wears just that.

Saint Paul is also the Boston of the Midwest. This means that many of our police officers are still Irish and have Actual Irish Accents. Until quite recently, in fact, we didn't have neighborhoods, we had parishes, and families identified themselves by which Catholic Church they attended.

To say Saint Paul is conservative is to state the obvious.

So, when I saw the bumper stickers on this gentleman's maroon Old Man Car, I was, I confess, surprised.


I mean, I didn't expect that. And I found myself thinking--"Maybe this is his daughter's car. Or his granddaughter's car. And he's just taking it in to fill the tank and wash the windows." Which is just the sort of thing nice older gentlemen in Saint Paul do.

But who's to say? Maybe it was his car and maybe they were his bumper stickers. In which case, perhaps we are no longer as conservative as we used to be.

Bumper Stickers Make Me Think

So, I'm driving behind a car I've seen before in the neighborhood. It has a lovely line of minimalist bumper stickers lined across the rear bumper. Three of them are plain white, with basic black lettering. No pictures, icons, fancy fonts, distracting colors. Just clear, plain, easy-to-read comments designed to be legible at legal following distance.

They say:

Well-behaved women
rarely make history

It is easier to raise healthy boys
than to fix broken men


Knowledge speaks but wisdom listens
Jimi Hendrix



The last bumper sticker did not fit this format. In fact, it was a red, white and blue political sticker, that said:

Bush
Cheney

Which puzzled me. While I don't actually live in a socialist republic neighborhood, or an anarcho-syndicalist commune, there are a lot of proud Democrats and other liberals, and the first three stickers made me wonder what it was about George W. Bush and Dick Cheney that appealed to the person who had so carefully placed those other comments.

Then I looked again.

The last one actually said:



Ah! Not a campaign sticker at all, but a political statement against the current administration! No wonder I was confused. Nice to know that my knee-jerk assumptions about people are sometimes right.

More Bumper Stickers To Show And Tell

In a fit of efficiency this year, I did most of my holiday (and post holiday--hello good friend "Clearance"!) shopping on-line. The downside of that is not having to drive through all 97.6 miles of parking lot at the Mall Of Abundance and thus not seeing many bumper stickers.

However, you lucky dogs, I have recently been outside the house and seen the following:

I love my country
But I think we should start seeing other people.

Quit bugging me!
I'm running out of places to HIDE the BODIES!



Editor's note: When written in plain font, with the spacing actually present on a bumper sticker, these sayings start to look like free verse. Which is not to say that they look like poetry, exactly. Check it out.

I love my country
But I think we should
start seeing other people.

Quit bugging me!
I'm running out of places
to hide the bodies!

Thus is born a literary project: to collect these sayings and see if I can, in fact, construct a narrative of some sort that looks like it's intentional and not just random. Because, sure, we can write Dadaist poetry with bumper stickers, but that's just too easy.

And hey! Look at that! Some academic and literary content with your morning blog reading! How often do you get that?