NORMAN — Remember back when gas was cheaper and summer was a time when families took to the highways and superhighways on the great American summer vacation? Maybe you even remember when the Mother Road, Route 66, was the fastest and easiest way to cross the country. Maybe you don’t even have to “remember when” because yours is one of the families who keep up the tradition in spite of the economy.
When my family was making the trek, it wasn’t a matter of zipping from Interstate to Interstate and bypassing all the cities en route. To get anywhere interesting, you had to get off at State Highway This or U.S. That and drive from town to town through miles of farmland — huge fields of corn and wheat and soybeans with the occasional welcome interruption of a series of signs like:
Dim your lights
Behind a car
Let folks see
How bright you are
Burma Shave
Also notable were barn roofs touting Mammoth Cave and other tourist attractions. My grandfather’s barn was one of many that urged passersby to “Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco.”
Once when I was small I asked my grandfather why he put that on his barn roof when he didn’t chew tobacco. He said, “A man came through and offered to put a new roof on the barn for free.”
It sounded like a good deal to me. The company got its ad, my grandfather’s barn stayed dry and nobody had to plow around a billboard. Free enterprise in action.
It probably sounded like a good deal to Lee Boyum, too, when Cambria, a manufacturer of quartz countertops in St. Peter, Minn., offered to fix up his silo and an adjacent barn, painting the barn red with a shiny tin roof and the silo black with “Cambria” in white lettering and a couple of gold dragons to set it off. The silo had previously been painted to look like a soft drink can — first Coca-Cola, then 7-Up — but was looking “kind of old,” Cambria co-owner Marty Davis told our CNHI sister paper The Free Press of Mankato, Minn.
A deal was struck, and I thought the resulting paint job looked quite tasteful as photographed by The Free Press. It certainly looked a lot more pleasant to drive by than a “kind of old” looking barn with a giant soft drink can attached.
None of which made any difference to the State of Minnesota. The company and the landowner didn’t ask permission from the state to advertise on the silo, which is near Highway 169, so the state wants the ad removed.
Not, as far as I can tell, because it’s bothering anybody. Just because they forgot to say, “Mother may I?”
Attempts to work with the state, submit an advertising application and so on, failed. The state set a June 1 deadline for removal, but a district judge has issued an injunction pending an August hearing.
Free Press writer Dan Nienaber reports that “Cambria has also asked for relief from a local board that considers land-use appeals, but it’s unclear what bearing that group of five residents can have on the process,” and that public opinion “seems to favor Cambria and the improvements it’s made to the silo and barn.”
So do I.
Why should owning land near a highway make a person lose his Constitutional right to free speech? Because that sure looks like what’s happening here. This farmer isn’t offending the public morals. He’s not yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. He’s not even trying to put an ad where there wasn’t an ad before.
In this day of huge sums changing hands in exchange for “naming rights” on everything from Enron Stadium to the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, why should it be a crime for the little guy to cash in for a change?
Considering how hard it is for farmers to get by these days and considering the noise and pollution he has to put up with having a highway close to his land, it seems only fair to let the man sell the “naming rights” to his silo.
Linda Henley 366-3530 citydesk@normantranscript.com
