Always the Fall Guy

Several years ago, they tore down the old factory that had been built next to my house when I was a child. There's now an empty lot where a tool and die business used to operate day and night, seven days a week. That has left the whole south wall of my house exposed. I sort of miss the insulation that that extra layer of brick and that buffer of building used to provide for me. My heating and cooling bills have certainly gone up since the dramatic demolition of the factory. But on the other hand, it has been rather nice to have a view, and a neighboring lot where wild hollyhocks and a whole garden of wild flowers might take hold once again - before some other developer comes in and takes over the land with new construction.

That might not be too soon though. That lot has remained vacate now for several years. However, a little while ago, a new element was added to the scene. I was approached by an illuminated sign company interested in renting my south wall for advertising. Since I'm on a busy street with lots of traffic, and since there's now a clear line of sight from the street to the broad expanse of my south wall - they thought my location was ideal for advertisers. Was I interested in having an illuminated billboard put up there. The representative from the signage company was cajoling. I could earn $250 a month in space rental and I wouldn't have to do a thing. The company would put up the billboard, light it, and maintain it. They'd do all the work, of course being very careful not to damage my wall or my roof in the process of installation. All I'd have to do is sit back and collect the money.

Well, there was just one tiny little thing I'd have to do. I'd have to pay for the electricity used by the floodlight they'd install over the sign. But the man rushed to assure me that they now used LED lights which consumed very little electricity. The lighting shouldn't add more than a dollar or two to my monthly electric bills. So, how about it?

I knew that if I were to be consistent with all my previous preachings, I should turn the man away. I had always been so stoutly against "consumerism" in all its forms. I'd inveighed against getting and spending, and against advertising so that people could be prodded to get and spend more and more at an ever accelerating pace. So really, the decision should have been a no-brainer.

But wait a minute. I considered. A billboard really wouldn't be disruptive in my context. I had no residential neighbors who might be bothered by the sight or the lighting. My street was already largely industrial, so an ad wouldn't be a commercial intrusion into what should be an uninterrupted natural setting. Then the extra money would certainly come in handy.

But more than that, I thought how billboard ads nowadays are often works of art. I thought of the lavish, seductive posters that feature women in dreamlike, liquid, poses - renderings reminiscent of Salvador Dali. Whatever product was being sold was incidental at best. Any association of the image with a certain brand of perfume or jewelry or clothing was very subtly subliminal. The arresting artistry of the image itself was the main event.

More specifically, I remembered how I'd been captivated by a lot of the signage I'd seen on my recent whirlwind (if this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium) tour of western Europe. I'd spent a lot of the one short day we had in Amsterdam just standing at the main traffic interchange downtown, starring at the immense LED ads there. Many of them were close-ups of handsome Hollywood stars. There were huge portraits of the likes of Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp that looked as if they might have been photographs taken by master artists such as Stieglitz or Steichen. A person could stand there and feel absorbed into the very souls of these personalities. It was unimportant, and almost undetectable, what the signs were there to sell.

I pictured perhaps such a soul-searching portrait on the side of my building - a photographic insight into Brad Pitt or Matthew McConaughey. What an improvement that would be over my present bare wall of brick that needed tuckpointing. So the twin prospects of the money and the McConaughey convinced me. I told the salesman to go ahead - to have his crew install the billboard. I signed an elaborate contract which reassured me further by giving me the right to refuse any signs that I deemed to have inappropriate subject matter.

I was disappointed to learn that an ad wouldn't go into place right away. First the space had to be announced for rent. So the billboard was erected, but its floodlight only illuminated an encouragement writ large to "Rent this Space. Call Marla at XXXXXX." I wondered how many men might call Marla, not to have an ad posted, but to "have a good time."

A couple of months passed - and no takers. The signage company man dropped by though to inform me that a business not far from my building had expressed an interest in the space. It was the "Brew and Grow" company, one of a chain of stores that specialize in selling kits for making beer or wine at home. But they sell a lot more than that. They sell grow lights of all kinds, along with seeds and bulbs and already-growing plants that a person can nurture indoors using the other equipment that's on the store's shelves.

Well, that wouldn't be so bad. Maybe I wouldn't get the intense romance of someone like Brad Pitt looking out at me. But I'd have the miracle of a sort of modern-day hanging garden up there. I often pass the Brew and Grow company and their windows cast a real enchantment onto the street. They have a glass facade, so the fruit trees and cacti and tomatoes and peppers they have growing inside year-round are visible. With the grow lights bathing the plants in blue-green wavelengths, all the leaves seem to glow from some inner luminescence. The effect is especially striking in the winter, when snow drifts are packed high against the building outside, while the lush greenery persists and thrives just on the other side of the glass, in effulgent contrast. It looks like a greenhouse full of exotic plants landed from outer space, a hypnotic and dangerous beauty.

So yes, I thought I wouldn't at all mind having some picture of that on my south wall. But that magic didn't materialize either. A few more months passed and my wall still went unclaimed. The signage company salesman was surprised that the space hadn't been snapped up by some advertiser, considering its prime location. I almost considered following Judy Holliday's example in the movie It Should Happen to You. I thought about renting the space myself and plastering just my name up there - representative of nothing - a bare name with no accomplishment, talent, or meaning behind it.

But it didn't come to that. Finally - finally. While I was briefly on vacation, the friend staying at my house called to say the space had been taken at last. Since the signage company hadn't been able to reach me, they'd gone ahead and hung the sign, assuming I'd have no problem with it. My space had been rented by -  a firm of lawyers specializing in lawsuits. So instead of the alluring artistry I'd anticipated, I had a crude cartoon drawing of a person falling into an open manhole. The text reads something like:

Had an Accident?

Call Gabinsky and Brothers, Attorneys at Law

We'll Get a Settlement for You -

FAST!

XXX-XXX-XXXX

So I was accommodating the questionable activities of what might in effect be ambulance chasers. I had gotten neither McConaughey nor mangoes. Instead I have the unlovely image of someone falling into a sewer. The story of my life.

What's more, it seems to me that my electric bills have more than doubled from the pre-floodlight days. Maybe LED lights aren't so cheap to run after all. I'll have to look into that.