My Dad was a self-employed sign painter and was quite good at it. He also, on occasion, would take a drink and could be quite good at that too.
Actually, Daddy was very talented at a lot of pursuits he just happened to pick sign-writing as he called it as a way to contribute to his family. He certainly never got rich at doing it.
Even though I can remember my Dad laying out as well as painting his signs, I also recall a few quite artistic “sailor” words which would storm from his lips indicating a mistake. Nevertheless, I can’t remember any permanent errors which his lettering brushes had made.
Thinking back about how good my Dad was at his job, I can’t imagine what he would say seeing the two signs above I caught with my cell phone camera at the laundromat this afternoon. Well, actually I can imagine. I’m sure his response would likely include those words he no doubt honed as a merchant seaman during the second World War. In case you are wondering what I am speaking about, I invite you to find the misspelled words in the two signs.
Now I have made my share of mistake over the years in print and perhaps have one or six in this little missive. A good many of those mistakes I have made are still out there for all to see even though one would be hard-pressed to find the correction printed after the fact to say: “Oh golly gee, sorry!” But making mistakes on signs are a totally different beast than those on the news page.
Granted if you have a young child advertising his lemonade stand or neighborhood porno movie kiosk you might excuse an errant word here or there, perhaps even a backwards “S” or the like would add a little childhood charm in the marketing effort. Or if you have a sign by a down-home fellow who perhaps never finished his education and he is just trying to scrape by selling tomatoes on the side of the road or has a two-fer rooster sale and will fix your lawnmower engine.
But these signs above come from a mini-market which sells a major gasoline as well as having thousands invested in, albeit worn-out, washers and dryers.
What does the above signs say to me? Well, knowing the fellows who run the place who are of Southern Asian extraction I have to say it could be an ESL (English as Second Language) gilflirt. I am not certain that the word “gilflirt” is a real world, but I have always heard it mean something like the acronym SNAFU (Situation Normal All F***ed Up) or FUBAR (F***ed Up Beyond All Recognition). In other words, the words in the above signs got lost a little in translation or spelling or both.
The second possibility is that the people who run the “premisis” just don’t give a rat’s ass. That is not a deadly sin but one would think such thought doesn’t exactly translate into a lot of the work and business ethic in this nation.
Finally, all the above reasons plus others might be at work. Who knows? And who knows how long the signs have been there? They actually may have pre-dated the Asian fellows.
I am just saying that in the mind of some the sign is a work of art and while it might not stay around long enough for anthropologists or art historians to study for hundreds of years, they say a lot about the here and now. Plus, the spelling looks downright funky.