As I drive out of Fernie toward Cranbrook, I am reminded of a Gary Larson cartoon. The road is lined with crude signs. White painted quarter sheets of plywood with crude lettering staked to rebar poles delineate various seafood options ahead. Candied Sox-I. Scallops. Prawns. And so on. In the Gary Larson cartoon a dog hides behind the open door of a clothes dryer. A cat is walking into the laundry room. On top of the clothes dryer sits a sign with an arrow pointing to the open door, ‘cat fud’. Both the seafood signs and the ‘cat fud’ sign look like they’re are written by the same 7-year old illiterate.
Sox-I my ass.
I love seafood. I grew up on the ocean. I would no more buy seafood from a 7-year old illiterate in the interior of BC than I would than I would buy a car from that guy in a shiny polyester suit with slicked back hair saying, hands to his chest, “Honest, my grandmother bought it new and only drove it to church and back every other Sunday.”
Church on Sunday my ass.
What are we? Stupid? Do the morons in the yellow broken down old school bus think that because they look dumb, we think we’re getting a better deal on some seafood a day’s drive from the ocean? That maybe they don’t know what they have and are selling cheap? Our gain. Their loss.
Read the news. Food poisoning falls in two broad categories. Poorly handled lettuce/salad makings and seafood. That’s about it.
So who in the world would trust a bunch of 7-year old illiterates to take proper care of a bus load of seafood while traveling from the coast?
And the signs are a blight. We live in a beautiful valley. To have signs like that strung along the road is criminal (And quite likely literally, since then would be against the RDIK bylaw, but one rarely enforced.).
So next time you drive down that row of nasty signs, think about the presentation and simple obvious reflection on the likely quality of the product.
Step on the gas and keep on going. It’s a no brainer.
And next time you have a couple extra glasses of wine and decide to (reasonably) walk home, consider beautifying the highway by tossing a couple quarter sheets of plywood in the ditch.
