Late on a cold March afternoon I finished work a little early and stopped into Billie Jo s Bar and Grill for a beer. I sat
down next to long-time friend Mark Walker. I had inspired him to drink craft beer after many sessions sitting in the
bar in my basement while enjoying my collection of breweriana. Marks first beer sign was a Hamm s scene-o-rama
that I talked him into buying from Steve Miner. After owning the scene-o-rama for a year or two he was taking a
much stronger interest in beer signs and craft beer. Last Christmas his wife Tracy contacted me about a beer sign for
a gift and I hooked her up with a lighted Grain Belt sign and small Grain Belt weather station. Next a Grain Belt clock
for his birthday. Suddenly he s a collector!
Back to Billie Jo s, it s my favorite bar in Algona a small town in north Iowa. The food is excellent, the atmosphere is
comfortable and welcoming and they have 12 (now 36) tap handles and 11 of them are craft beer. Mark started
stopping in on a regular basis too as his love for beer was growing and his taste expanding. After getting
comfortable on a stool and settling into a pint of Schell s he looks at me and says I found some Kato signs on an old
building we need to go get . Well my ears perked up like a beerhound when someone opens the lid on a cooler full
of cold ones. Kato signs I said. Where I asked quietly? He says I was up near Burt looking at an old grainary to
move and I walked behind it to take a leak and looked over and saw some old signs that said Kato . Now I m all
excited and asking questions while trying be
discreet and keep our conversation between
us. Mark says I ve been here too long and
need to go but we ll go get them sometime .
As you can imagine I m beside myself
dreaming about these Kato signs and
wondering what kind of shape they re in and
what they look like. A few days passed
before Mark and I crossed paths at the bar
again. As I sat down on a stool next to him I
quickly steered the conversation to the signs.
Mark says we can probably go up there
sometime next week . I said sounds good
lets go on Monday . Monday couldn t arrive
soon enough, but it finally did. We set out in
Mark s Tahoe with some basic tools and a
cooler with a couple cold Grain Belts to
celebrate our find and slake our thirst after
the job was finished. As we re approaching
the site I m trying to picture the building as he
describes it to me. Suddenly it comes into
view and it looks nothing like I thought it would. A small structure about 15 feet long and perhaps 12 feet wide. It s
all covered in metal siding and painted red. As we pull up on the south side of the building I m querrying Mark about
the location of the signs on the building when suddenly I see one. My imagination had been running wild about this
discovery and suddenly it was dampened by the appearance of the first sign. It was part of the siding and had been
painted over with lead based barn red paint. Still excited but more restrained we got out and started looking over the
building. There s the other signs Mark said while pointing them out to me. They were on the east side of the
building and the same fate had befallen them. Red paint!
I walked around the north side and noticed a couple of other signs but they were not beer signs. Well I said lets
get them off the building and we ll do something with them . So we broke out some pry-bars and started to remove
them. One of the them was being guarded by a small tree growing out of the ground so after removing the one
above it I moved around the corner to the south side while Mark continued to work on the remaining signs on the
east side. The farmer that nailed these signs on must have used every