Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 17, 1993 TAG: 9301170036
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
VANDALS WITH DESIGNS ON SIGNS
To the untrained eye, or to the casual follower of current events, the toppling last week of a decorative sign on Franklin Road was an isolated act of vandalism.We sophisticates cannot help but remember the day-after-Thanksgiving carnage that felled the controversial "Welcome to Shawsville" sign.
That sign, which may or may not have been in Elliston, was the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Falkland Island of Montgomery County.
After months of dispute, negotiations and innuendo, the Shawsville sign in Elliston - or Shawsville, depending on whose side you were on - met its maker. A chain saw took it down.
Now a much less political sign in Roanoke has met a similar fate.
Sign rustlers with a political bent?
"Welcome to Old Southwest. A past with a future," says the sign in the median strip on Franklin Road near the Interstate 581 underpass. It's been there for about five years.
On Monday night last week, the colorful sign lay flat.
"All I know is it was there at 5 p.m. on Monday and it was down by 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday," said Jan Wilkins, the vice president of Old Southwest Inc., the neighborhood posse.
Police say they quickly arrested Gary Wayne Anderson, 38, on suspicion of tearing down the sign. Anderson was found walking a short distance away, unarmed with chainsaws or any of the other conventional tools of political sign devastation. Police said Anderson does not have an address. He picked up the $400 4-by-4 sign posts from the ground and they broke.
"I've seen the remains, and it was pretty beat up," said Wilkins.
As political-sign violence goes, this one appears to have been a random act.
No Elliston or Shawsville groups have stepped forward to claim responsibility. Just Gary Wayne Anderson.
He not having an address, it was impossible to ask him where he might have been the night after Thanksgiving.
Regardless, Old Southwest's sign was re-erected on Thursday.
Don't read any emotional reasons into the neighborhood's swift response to the vandalism. In a heartwarming story, this would be the bowed, bloodied community's message to the criminal element that it will not be broken.
This is not a heartwarming story.
"We happened to have an emergency backup sign on hand," said Wilkins. A city crew did the work.
"I thought the holes would fill up if we didn't move fast," said Wilkins. "Plus, I missed that sign."
Law-abiding citizens can relax. This is not a sign that sign-hacking is now infesting our sedate valleys. Nor have carjacking or wilding or serial killing or hijacking or cannibalism, so far as we know.
We have a lot to be thankful for, and plenty to ponder.
"I want to know why somebody would want to do a thing like that," says Wilkins.
It is a question for the ages. A question long as the Shawsville-Elliston feud itself. Old as Old Southwest.