The Night the Sign Fell

By Dan Hagen

At 3 a.m. the night of Halloween, 2008, I was awakened by angry, drunken shouts from the front of the house. 

I saw four college guys out there, and one of them was yanking our Obama/Biden yard sign out of the middle of the front lawn. The sign was an expensive, laminated photo job custom-made by Paul at his Big Picture business.
I ran downstairs and threw open the door just as they were reeling away. I chased after them, demanding our sign back. 

They shouted insults and retreated around the corner, with me following as fast as I could — which, as it turns out, is none too fast on a paved road in my stocking feet.
Finally they turned and confronted me. 

I demanded the sign they had torn out of the ground.  Between curses and insults, one of them snarled, “We don’t have your sign, man.”
What I had thought was the rolled-up sign turned out to be a baseball bat one of them was carrying. 

Oddly enough, that didn’t bother me because I was so pissed off. Over the previous eight years, I’d had a great deal more than enough of these fascist scum.
I was so mad that it took me a moment to realize that the drunkest and nastiest of the bunch was wearing a long blonde wig and a short silver dress.
I had been vandalized by Veronica Lake.
I decided to reason with them. 

“Fuck you, you little pieces of shit,” I explained.
They wandered off down the road, shouting “Faggot!” and “Old man!” back at me, as I stuck a hand behind me to flip them off and limped home to look for the sign.
A police patrol car came rolling up, cherries and spotlight blazing, then another one. Paul had called 911, and he joined me outside. 

With a police officer, we found the sign lying in the yard where one of them had ripped it off the holder. The police headed off after the four college guys, after asking me if I could describe any of them.
“He’s wearing a dress,” I said.
We went back in the house, and, ever house-proud, Paul was appalled to notice that I was leaving a trail of bloody footprints on the tile. I had cut my toe outside. 

Larry got me a big Band-Aid, and our Dalmatian Baby wandered around, repeatedly making the mute point that with everybody awake, it certainly must be time for her breakfast.
Paul was able to repair the sign, so the incident cost only one red-stained Dr. Scholl’s white sock.
Bloodied but unbowed, that was me.