From the Editor: The Signs Are Everywhere

When people think about advertising collectibles, they probably picture vintage neon signs or a box of pencils imprinted with some long-forgotten business from the 1940s. I think of motorcycle patches.

Long before I knew there was a name for advertising memorabilia, my family produced and sold it.

My father spent much of my childhood on the road, traveling from one motorcycle shop to the next with display boards filled with embroidered patches representing Harley-Davidson, Triumph, Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, and dozens of other motorcycle brands. Carried from town to town, the boards showed shop owners what was available for their customers.

Like most family businesses, everyone pitched in. All seven of us kids assembled display boards, sorted inventory, and prepared orders under the watchful eye of my mother, who held everything together while my father traveled. Looking back, I suppose child labor laws would have frowned on our operation. We were simply pitching in.

Eventually, my father saw another opportunity. If motorcycle enthusiasts proudly wore embroidered patches, why not offer decals as well? My Uncle Joseph, a talented artist, transformed ideas into line drawings that became silk-screen stencils. Before long, we had built a small screen-printing shop in Shelbyville, Tennessee.

My tenth-grade year was measured less by semesters than by ink colors. Red, blue, black, and yellow plastisol permanently stained my hands and fingernails, while the harsh solvents we used to clean screens left our skin perpetually dry. Water-based inks weren't yet part of our vocabulary. My brother and I learned to screen print and operate the die-cut machine, while my siblings kept freshly printed decals moving through the conveyor dryer and onto drying racks. It was repetitive work, but there was satisfaction in watching stacks of finished decals grow by the hour.

Because of my daddy, those decals soon found their way into motorcycle shops across America. During the summer, each of us children took turns accompanying him for a week on his sales trips. I looked forward to my turn every year and often volunteered for more. Sitting beside my dad, I watched America roll by one small town at a time, helping navigate, searching for coffee, and stopping at motorcycle dealerships that stretched from one end of the country to the other.

Years later, after our family moved to California, my father opened a sign shop. Alongside storefront signs came promotional products: key chains, magnets, Frisbees, pens, sunglasses, lanyards, lapel pins, even Rubik's Cubes. Each piece was imprinted with a company's name and designed to keep that business in front of its customers.

Without realizing it, I had spent my childhood surrounded by the very things collectors now call advertising memorabilia.

Those experiences also shaped my own career. I eventually became a graphic sign designer, fabricator, installer, and project manager, following a path that began years earlier beside a silk-screen press and in the passenger seat of my father's car.

Looking back, I realize I never really had much chance of choosing another profession. My maternal grandfather was a sign painter, and all three of his sons followed him into the sign industry. My cousins learned the trade in my Uncle Buck's sign shop, and in 1985, three of them installed the iconic green neon that outlines Dallas' Bank of America building. Their oldest brother spent his career with one of Dallas' largest sign companies, while my sister, Tracie, continued the family tradition as both a graphic sign designer and an accomplished hand-letterer.

My father's path was different, but it led to the same industry. He built businesses around motorcycle patches, decals, signs, and advertising specialties, giving our family a front-row seat to the world of commercial advertising. Between my father's entrepreneurial spirit and my mother's family’s trade, I was surrounded by the sign industry from both directions.

Today, when I walk through an antique mall and spot a weathered porcelain sign or a faded advertising giveaway, I don't just see a collectible. I see the people who designed it, fabricated it, and sold it. I remember ink-stained hands, the smell of screen-printing solvents, long summer road trips with my dad, and a family that made its living helping businesses get noticed.

 Advertising memorabilia preserves more than American commerce. For me, it preserves a family legacy.