Just as I got back to town my phone rings and it s Mark. He says me and my hired man are going to start getting
the signs meet us out there . Needless to say I called my wife and said I m going to retrieve beer signs so don t make
any plans tonight. I rushed to the building site as fast as I could. As I arrived Mark and his hired man Jason were
already getting the first couple of signs down. We worked for about an hour and half in a wind that felt like a
category 3 hurricane. Believe me when I
tell you it s no easy task to remove a 3 x 5
metal sign while on a ladder and carry it to
a truck in a gale force wind. I thought one
of us might end up in Oz. We removed
eleven more complete signs, all Storz
Triumph signs.
Back to Mark s garage for the unloading
and a few celebratory brews. We sat and
talked about what we had and how cool
and unreal it was to find all these signs on
this old building. Theories about how they
got there, and dreaming up solutions for
cleaning and displaying them.
A few days later we were able to get
together and start cleaning and
straightening the signs. I had made a call
to Barry Travis for some tips on how to do
this and he suggested finding a shop with a large press to flatten the signs especially the ones that were wrapped
around the corner of the building. Neither of us knew any place around town with a press that large so ole Marky
decided his 1 ton yard roller would do the trick. So we laid the signs on the garage floor and backed over them
repeatedly with this big lawn roller with a ton of concrete inside it. It worked great!
Then several nights and Saturday s were spent cleaning with rubbing compound and waxing the signs. Mark had
gone back and stripped off some partial pieces of more signs and some of the barn lumber to make frames with.
After much cleaning, waxing,
framing, admiring with a few
cold Grain Belts we finally had
them all ready to go.
Mark kept the Old Saxon and a
nice Triumph. I kept a nice
Triumph and then we found
good homes for most of the
others. We think we figured