Hill Blocks View

Fannin County has all the usual road signs that make me think of inane third-grade-level jokes. Signs like “Slow Children” (I guess they can’t get out of the road fast enough) and “Blind Drive” (I thought you had to take an eye test to get a license). But there is one sign that I do not recall ever seeing before. It says “Hill Blocks View.” Maybe I’ve never seen it because most of my driving from the age of 22 until recently was done on the notoriously flat and boring roads of Florida. Perhaps it is a common sign in other places in this country. Regardless, I don’t see the point of the sign.

A couple of things about the sign have me stumped. First of all, it seems so, well, obvious. Of course the hill blocks the view—it’s a giant mound of dirt, rock and vegetation. Any fool can see that. Do we really need a road sign pointing it out? One could speculate that the sign was created and mandated by the same over-cautious bureaucracy that considers us idiots and is bound and determined to put warning signs on everything. Signs like “Caution: Knives Are Sharp” or “Caution: Wood Has Splinters.” Did it ever occur to the mewling wimps who promulgate such signs that if someone is so unaware of his surroundings that he doesn’t realize there is a hill blocking his view, the odds are that he probably is not going to notice a sign that tells him there is a hill blocking his view?

The problem with the theory that the sign is product of a out-of-control namby-pamby bureaucracy is that you would then expect to see a sign that says “End of Hill Blocks View” so that the one motorist in ten million who may not have noticed that a hill was blocking his view will know that his view is no longer blocked. Since there is no such sign, it occurs to me that maybe there a real need for a “Hill Blocks View” sign. For the life of me I can’t think what it might be, and I’ve lost sleep pondering the question.

Someone I discussed this with offered the explanation that the sign is meant to warn drivers that there may be an unseen danger over the hill. If that’s the case, why don’t they warn drivers of a specific danger to be encountered rather than an anonymous one? Wouldn’t it be better if they used a sign that alerted drivers to the exact nature of the unseen danger like “Hidden Drive Ahead” or “School Bus Stop Over Hill”? That way drivers would know what to expect and be able to prepare themselves for it. As it stands now, if the sign is meant as a warning, it could be a warning of anything from a raging tanker truck fire to the edge of the world to a line of protesting marchers waving signs saying, “Have a blessed day.” How do you prepare for a danger when you don't know what it is? Remember, the sign was put up to warn people who can't see a damn hill in front of them. They are probably not the quickest witted drivers and need all the help they can get in preparing for a possible emergency.

Ahh, but that’s the point, you say. There could be any number of dangers lying beyond the crest of the hill you can’t see over. The authorities are simply alerting drivers that there may be a danger ahead that they can’t see because there is a hill blocking their view. 

But that gets me back to my original point. Any reasonable driver should be able to see that there is a hill in front of him that blocks his view of the road and, therefore, be able to reason that there could be an unseen danger ahead. Ergo, the sign is superfluous when it comes to careful and attentive drivers. 

For drivers who are so blind or inattentive that they don’t see that there is a hill blocking their view, then they sure as hell aren’t going to notice the sign. That means the sign is pointless for inattentive drivers. 

And if there are drivers who can see that there is a view-blocking hill in front of them but are too dimwitted to realize that there could be an unseen danger ahead, then a sign that tells them what they can already see—namely, that there is a hill ahead of them that is blocking their view—isn’t going to help them connect the dots. That means the sign is no help with stupid drivers. 

No matter how you look at it, the sign does not accomplish a purpose. There is such a thing as circular logic. This sign is circular idiocy.

Now at this point you’re probably thinking that I sound a obsessive over this sign and have spent way too much time dwelling on it. But that’s the glory and value of being retired and having the leisure to think long and hard about things both great and small. Most busy people would pass by the sign and never give it another thought. But it’s different with old retired farts. We have the time to think our way through things and reach those small incontestable kernels of absolute truth so needed in this confusing and messed up world. And the truth in this case is that a “Hill Blocks View” sign is a stupid waste of taxpayer money.

But the larger point of this post (and it does have a point regardless of what you may think) is that because retired people have the time to think deeply about things in life, the next time an old fart gives you some advice or says stuff like rap music sucks or Babe Ruth was the greatest baseball player who ever lived or God help us if Hillary Clinton ever gets elected president, don’t be so dismissive. The old fart has probably given the matter a lot of thought and may have a point.