Do you ever have weird things trigger a memory? I was driving home the other day, and I saw this ugly, kelly green address sign posted by the road. I do not know the people living in that home, but I know exactly where they got their sign.

When I was a senior in high school, our band was going to be marching in the Fiesta Bowl. The trip cost about $900, and many of the members had to do various fund raisers to try to earn enough money to go on this trip. And I was one of them.

We did everything from selling chocolates and wrapping paper to delivering phones books! (Now that was an interesting story!) But the most memorable and probably the most lucrative for most kids was the address sign fund raiser.

This guy, who at the time seemed to be in his eighties, came and told us all the wonderful benefits of this great address signs. They were a lovely shade of kelly green. Their reflective surface made them very easy to see at night, and if you ever had a heart attack, the paramedics would easily find your well labeled home.

So off we went with order forms in hand, trying to propagate the gospel of the new and amazing, gonna-sell-like-hotcakes address signs. I do not think I sold a single one. I guess it is because I did not really buy in to the hype. I mean the thing was hideous, and I could not understand why anyone would want to put such an eyesore in their front yard. Maybe if it had been decorative or even a different color? I don’t know, something!

So I missed out on this gold mine of a fund raiser, because those babies really sold! Which was quite a surprise, since they cost like $35! One of my fellow band mates really knew how to sell those suckers. She ended up raising like $2000. She donated what she didn’t need to other band members.

Back to the point of this tale, I still see these ugly signs mounted all around my city, and they have held up surprisingly well over the last decade. And I think to myself………..I still don’t get it!