‘Travelers exiting the south side of Minnesota often find themselves stopping off the interstate in Fishborne, a small but immaculate town, frozen in time by a particularly rigid historical society. So carefully is Fishborne preserved, that a good deal of notice is drawn to a billboard on the outskirts, not far from the state line. The billboard, relative to the town, is an eyesore. Its paper is dry and peeling and it flakes off onto the countryside like diseased skin, sometimes reaching as far as Fishborne itself before being promptly swept into the trash. Its legs are bending and weak, warped by snowfall and wind and the incredible weight that it bears, the weight of hundreds of past advertisements, layered there like the flesh of the earth on which it stands.
This billboard can be rented like any other but, unlike the others, it is never cleared. The result is a less-than-ideal surface for adhesive and the first storm that comes along, sometimes even the first stiff wind, will pull strips of it down, creating the ragged collage that stands much of the year. Residents of Fishborne and of the small towns nearby see their future in these images and invite travelers to do the same (though an individual’s interpretation is kept as secret as a birthday wish).
From the billboard, a certain pantheon has even begun to evolve, the most recent of which is a chicken’s head and body (“Don’t be a chicken, vote ‘yes’ on Prop 84!”) perched on the neck of a middle-aged woman (“Who said we had to choose between youth and beauty?”). For nearly a month, ‘Mama Chicka’ shifted and evolved, her left hand giving way to the tip of a french fry and her chest falling forward to reveal the head of a goat. “Don’t Pay,” she would go on to say, before finally sloughing off into the dirt, “Be an EXIT NOW.”
It is a peculiar business, buying space on the sign. Locals attempt to design images that decay well, hedging bets on the perceived sturdiness of specific sections of the paper slab. The result rarely benefits anyone but the owner, who doesn’t believe in anything but the money he’s given.”
When the Editor and I arrive we position ourselves at the back of a small crowd that surrounds the ‘Sign Outside Fishborne.’ Heavy rain in the area has caused a molting and, even as we watch, strips of paper peel from the surface and splatter on the ground with wet, fleshy slaps. Much of the groups disperses as the sun begins to set, but a few set up camp and the Editor and I join them.
A wind picks up late in the night and I wake to the sound of leaves skittering across the pavement nearby- the mutter of this long autumn, louder for mingling with the drying scraps of old adverts and ashes from the fire.
I wake again, in the dark, disoriented by a massive noise and dragged from the tent by the Editor. A section of the billboard, nearly a foot thick, has peeled down to land as a multicolored log at the foot of the sign. Above us is an old image in its entirety- a black and white logo made up of nested circles and the words ‘Summer is the righteous anger of a star, try “Autumn by the Wayside,” available at your local secondhand bookdealer.’
-traveler