Back in about ’71 or so a young, wild, blonde haired kid came through Fort Stockton in a rig just about like this one, eight shades of rust on the outside and a Navajo interior on the inside. A Hemi under the hood and a surfboard strapped on top, something hardly ever seen around the Fort.

He was here for the summer and applied at the Piggly Wiggly for a job stocking shelves. But the manager had placed a sign out front that said, “Long-haired freaky people need not apply.” So he tucked up his hair, up under his hat and went in to ask him why.

“You look like a fine upstandin’ young man, I think you’ll do,” the manager said.

The guy took off his hat, said, “Imagine that! Me, workin’ for you!”

He went across the parking lot to the Grounds for Divorce for a sweet tea. Told Lucinda, “Sign, sign. Everywhere a sign. Blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind. Do this, don’t do that. Can’t you read the sign.?” She wasn’t sure how to respond, but wrote her number on the back of his check along with an offer to wax his board anytime he liked.

He got in the old Dodge Suburban wagon and gunned it outside of town, stirrin’ up a cloud of dust. In front of the old Fogerty place, there was a sign that said, “Anybody caught tresspassin’ will be shot on sight. So he crawled on top of the Dodge and yelled, “What gives you the right? To put up a fence to keep Mother Nature in? If God was here he tell you to your face, ‘You’re some kind of sinner?’”

He pulled the bad-ass wagon up to the Lucky Lady that night for dinner. Was going to meet Lucinda. But he was stopped at the door. “Hey you, Mister, can’t you read? You gotta have a shirt and tie to get a seat. You can’t even watch, no you can’t eat. You ain’t supposed to be here. The sign said, “‘You got to have a membership card to get inside.’”

He wasn’t sure if it was the rumble of the Hemi, the power of the patina all over the Suburban, or the bodacious chrome scowl of the grill that made him an outcast. Maybe it was the hair. He tightened down the straps holding down the Dextra atop the beast of a ride and headed west.

But then he passed the Almost United Methodist Church. “Everybody welcome. Come in, kneel down and pray.” But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all, he didn’t have a penny to pay. So he got him a pen and a paper and made up his own little sign. It said, “Thank you Lord, for thinking’ ‘bout me. I’m alive and doin’ fine.”

Pastor P. liked to think the stranger learned a little something that day. But really, some said, it was the stranger who taught the town on his brief visit. He taught us beauty is only skin deep, but patina goes all the way to the bone. He taught us The Wheel of Life is a black steely with a dog dish hubcap. He taught us a surfboard in the summer to keep you cool and a Navajo blanket in the winter to keep you warm is all you need when you got a Hemi under the hood and an 8-Track in the dash.

Others said he wasn’t even human. He was a sign. That’s right, a sign. Everywhere a sign.