This was a crappy day weather-wise.  Some hours where I had to sit and wait for the rain to stop and the clouds to leave.  And then there was a little incident in Houston where I made a driving boo-boo.  I was changing lanes quickly to the left to do a U-turn and did not see the car in my blind spot that was rapidly moving up on my left.  So, a big scraping sound and we both pulled over. Luckily, he had a teensy one-inch scratch on his fender that he said not to worry about.  But when I looked at Sparkle, her entire grille was GONE.  Laying in the street and being run over by rush-hour traffic.  I dodged in there and grabbed it.  Some broken bits but I was able to have a body shop nearby perform magic with zipties and get it secured.  No left turn signal (wires broken) but the headlights worked so I lived with the situation for the rest of the trip.  I was a bit shaken by that and have been ultra careful/paranoid about blind spots since then.  My insurance is high enough after two speeding tickets last year!

Let’s start with this place in Corpus Christi which has some charming decades’ old signs:

Moving on to this flower shop sign in Victoria:

 
This sign in Victoria is pretty much a miracle.  One of my favorite signs of all time — this one had an animated bow and arrow with flaming arrows that moved across a wire to the roof of the restaurant.  Here’s one of my photos from 2011 — and more photos of what the sign originally looked like & the arrows at my website here:
http://www.roadarch.com/sca/extension4.html#Corral

Then, in 2017, Hurricane Harvey came along and destroyed the top part of the sign with the Indian.  It was bent completely in half and un-repairable.  The owner talked for years about restoring it.  In late 2018, he finally did.  Okay — so there’s no neon but the feel of the old sign is still there and it sure beats nothing or a horrible plastic box version.

A close-up of the new Indian:

 
One more from today — this place opened in Houston last year with this sign.  It’s sort of a scaled down version of the Portland’s Palms Motor Hotel sign:

Here’s the Portland sign for comparison:

More later today…

dj & the dogs