velkommen to the island
Used to be we kept a giant billboard bottom of Land’s Hill coming onto the island telling any and all that this was Private Property. The beaches, the clams, the crabs, the whole she-bang were owned by us property holders and if you knew what was good for you, you’d stay off our land.
This was about l980 and some good old boys from the Homeowners’s Association decided to erect the thing. Stanwood has a Wellkommen. Camano had a KEEP OUT… Somebody cut it down right off the Get-Go. I thought about doing it myself, it was so nasty and in your face. But it got put right back up with steel legs hidden inside the wood ones so a chain saw wouldn’t work to take it down next try.
Being on state highway right-of-way, the sign was Illegal. A few years later another sign went on the big sign covering up the Keep Off Private Property with a Respect Private Property at the bottom. Not near as hostile, but still …. not real inviting. Twenty years that sign sat there guarding the island’s only entry by would-be trespassers.
About l998 we were building the new Visitor Center at Terry’s Corner. Department of Transportation came by wanting permission to tear that sign down. Wanted to know who put it up, who owned it, who maintained it. Me, being at the corner every day, they figured I must be the head honcho of the Chamber of Commerce. For two years I got calls from D.O.T. Wanting to cut me a deal. They offered to put the sign up at the Center for us. I said with a sign like that we wouldn’t NEED a Visitor Center. Just tear the ugly thing down. Nobody’s alive who cares. But they were worried about stepping on toes. I said those old boys sure didn’t care whose toes they stomped on when they E-rected that thing.
D.O.T. kept calling. Like I’m the Mayor of Camano. They’d put fancy stripes in our parking lot if they could tear it down, the man said. Finally, worn down after dozens of these conversations, I said, okay, you got a deal. And that’s how we got rid of that ugly sign and how we got fancy stripes too. Personally I wish I’d cut a deal now to put that sign up at the entrance to the South End. Plus they’d have had to make me honorary mayor.
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