Signs of This American Life (Michigan)

I'm finding that once you've lived in a new place for a year, what was once weird is now, if not quite normal, at least not surprising anymore.  We still see funny signs and strange behavior in Korea all the time, but it's more like quaint background now. Then we went to the US last month. And we got a fresh glimpse of "normal," a taste of what folks new to America might notice.  Some memorable examples follow.

In a ritzy little seasonal/tourist town along Lake Michigan, where we assumed the 97.2% Caucasian population (no kidding - I looked it up here) speaks English as a native language, we found an awkwardly punctuated sign at the public beach.  It is worth noting that "public" here means "approximately the size of a Snicker's bar," as it was wedged tightly between miles of adjoining private beaches duly warning against loitering.  And this in a town of 1200 people that has as its motto "The Village of Friendliness."

Ah, punctuation.  Let alone graphic design basics like font and alignment. 

At the top of the stairs descending to this selfsame Village of Friendliness beach, we found a frightening notice about ticks, which were apparently bigger than the beach itself.  Not until we got very close to read the fine print (and what self-respecting beachgoer wouldn't stop to learn more about a creepy-crawly the size of Nick's hand?) did we learn that the fearsome ticks are more like the size of, well, air molecules.  Tricksters.

Creepy sign suggest one may find Shelob and Aragog at the beach.
(see Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter for giant spider-y references) 

Oh, gosh, I should have brought my reading glasses to the beach.

Another sign caught my eye when we went to buy ammo for the shotgun.  (Um, yeah, ammo. Nick's brother had a clay pigeon set-up on the in-law's family farm and everyone 12 years and over tried it out.  We quickly tired of the tiny orange frisbees (they're not really pigeon-shaped) as they hurled themselves far away from where we were aiming, and so we set up ugly-Goodwill-clothes-scarecrows. True story.  If this is redneck fun, I want more).  ANYWAY.  We went to the ammo shop and saw this sign with local fishing news and promos for the store's fine wares.

"Meat rigs"??  Isn't that like zombie bait?
This was well beyond my understanding of hook + worm = fishing.
I was intrigued.

Then I kept reading.

Whoa there: WHAT kind of fly are they selling?
Aren't proctologists the doctors who..., well, enough said about THAT.
Fishing intrigue canceled.

In the very same Friendly Town, we noticed this painting on a family-owned grocery store. From a distance, this is a nice homey touch, illustrating three generations of hard-working folks who feed the local community.

Family grocery store.  Very nice.

 But then, upon closer examination, the painting was rather disturbing.

Grandpa looks a little creepy.

The son is not right, either.

And the scary gene was passed onto the next generation, too.
I think I'd rather face those enormous beach ticks than meet this family in the dairy aisle.

Thank you, Google.

And lest you think that strangeness is limited to small towns in Michigan, here's one from the Dallas airport. Waiting at the gate with hordes of Koreans for our 13.5 hour flight back to Seoul, a middle-aged, Caucasian woman's t-shirt caught my eye. A large camel was silhouetted against her grey shirt, centered beneath the large word HUMP. My mind refused to accept this, as advertising camel parts has no apparent market value and this woman did not appear to be the sort interested in soliciting what I had learned about in giggled middle-school whispers.  I did not have the nerve to ask for her picture as I could not think of a reasonable cover story ("Um, hi, I really like your hump"?). Only later, thanks to Google, did I realize her shirt probably had another word at the bottom.  Which did clarify the shirt's message but still did not explain why she chose this shirt in which to welcome Korea. And, no, we were not traveling on a Wednesday.

Ah, America.  Home of the free.