Quirk of the Week: Roadside roundup
“The whole universe is a complex of rhythms.” – Tom Robbins, “Another Roadside Attraction”
The roadside roundup continues after last week’s start at the inimitable “Chuck’s Hwy Service” filling station, off Highway 18 at Yamhill County History Museum. We asked if, in the late Chuck Kadell’s travels in search of vintage farm equipment, he missed the mailbox/tractor on Old Bethel Highway in Amity? It’s a prime example of something scattered around the county: antiques, or replicas, continuing service as signs or mailboxes.
Quirk has its subspecies, and this week’s collection is a chance to analyze the nomenclature, here at the halfway point of year three of this ongoing Quirk Qhronicle:
Intentional: Primarily there is Quirk that is meant to be: some unique or offbeat thing someone makes a point of placing, be it whim or self-expression. Such as the clock set on a 30-foot column north of Rickreall (for which we take a quick swerve outside the county.)
Such as that well-crafted filling station replica at the museum — which leads us to an example left out of last week’s stop at the county museum, perhaps the subcategory of Historical:
The outhouse on the museum grounds, visible near the entrance, is a wooden structure with a Dutch door, allowing the occupant both modesty and a view.
Accidental: Or some scale of random, another way to describe certain Quirk examples. The time-and-temperature sign permanently stuck at the wrong time and temp, across from the museum? Because there exists another permanently inaccurate temperature sign, across town on Lafayette Avenue.
How else to explain the Santa hat recently seen hanging on barbed wire atop a fence, about 50 feet off road behind a building on Alpha Drive?
Likely the broadest category of Quirk:
Subjective: These are the eye-of-the-beholder type — things that have been in place a long time, or shorter time. Perhaps they were created or installed as Quirk, or perhaps someone just sees them that way. Open to interpretation. These Quirk just have that certain quality that strikes one as happily unusual. Here are three examples:
• On West Second near the library, a bulkhead abutting the sidewalk serves as a unique, 5-foot-tall metal planter;
• The unique stone marker etched “Marsh Lane” at Riverside Drive (the oddness augmented by the addition of the many similar-sized boulders to prevent illegal camping along the street);
• From early Quirk, the Linfield University century-old commemorative plaques that the trunks of trees have covered up over time.
Should Not Be: The smallest category refers to things that are either unwanted or have not aged well, such as the slightly unsettling glimpse of powerlines weaving through stout trunk sections of a cedar on Wilson Street near Davis.
Or the desiccated and shredded sponsor support banners on the Yamhill Carlton High School softball complex? They’ve been that way for years, all but a couple unreadable, as pointed out a year ago in Quirk.
Another example, previously mentioned, but without a photo, was the inverted mannequin legs in a Highway 47 front yard, now in the category (thankfully) of …
Gone: This is an intriguing category, one thoroughly examined in the past two weeks (and are related to Back Again and, details below, Revisited). Good place to mention the scarf-wearing reindeer seen until April on Skyline Drive near Amity, and that “Alien” statuary recently disappeared in Yamhill. Or the fact that T & E General Store in Yamhill used to leave a thick row of golf clubs out overnight, selling them for $1 each.
Whatever group Quirk falls into, lately we’ve taken to lumping Quirk together — a testament to the way one thing retains its own special character even though it resembles other examples. Sometimes Quirk is nothing if not counter-intuitive.
Many Quirk stand alone, but sometimes the fact that there is more than one just enhances the endearing status of any single one.
Herein awaits another “revisiting” such as was done the last two weeks:
Months back we featured a block-letter sign reading “Sidewalk Ends,” west of downtown Dayton on Ash Street where the sidewalk actually ends. Its literal simplicity rendered it a case of Quirk.
As if it were the only one. Recently observed, a good 12 blocks away at the other end of Ash, is a second, identical “Sidewalk Ends” sign — also where the sidewalk ends.
Yet, concrete or otherwise, Quirk goes on.
Have you seen something that’s an example of quirk — an oddity that adds to the joy of life in Yamhill County? Email Kirby Neumann-Rea at neumann reakirby@gmail.com.
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