as someone who lives in florida, there is nothing that strikes more dread into my heart than the sign welcoming you to yeehaw junction. (yes, thatās the name of the town)
so, this is what the sign used to look like. pretty normal florida tourism stuff. you got your beach, an alligator, your sunshine, your cape canaveral space shuttle. you even have an ocean scene with a mermaid at the bottom. cliche, but maybe even cute:
this is a picture of it in 2016:
parts of it are missing, you can see the paint fading, and still, that damn sun smiles at you from the road, begging, pleading for you to enter the threshold of yeehaw junction. and still it gets worse.
this is a picture of the sign I took in 2021 (from my momās car on a road trip):
Thereās so much going on here. The faded paint, the peeling board, the graffiti, the whole chunk of it that has been gradually eaten away by the combined forces of time, wind, and rainā¦ you canāt see it from the picture because the mirror is in the way, but that damn sun is still smiling with itās stupid little sunglasses it doesnāt even need because ITāS THE FUCKING SUN. THE LIGHT IS COMING FROM IT. WHAT IS IT EVEN ATTEMPTING TO PROTECT ITSELF FROM, IF NOT THE ELEMENTS THAT, YEAR AFTER DREADFUL YEAR, CREEP UPON IT WITH THE ICY COLD FINGERS OF DECAY. THOSE SUNGLASSES, LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE IN THIS WORLD, ARE FUTILE.
The sunglasses, once silly and inviting, are now a mockery of this signās inability to defend itself against the inevitable course of entropy. they will not shield the smiling sun, whose smile is now fixed upon it until it crumbles into the sweeping landfill of history. behind that smile, it screams in endless, years-long agony. we too are not shielded from rotting into corpses, then dust, and finally to nothing, whatever futile means we take to prevent ourselves from fateās steady hand. the sun still survives, and yet how long? last year we had hurricane ian; has the yeehaw junction sign withstood its wrath, after taking blow after blow from countless hurricanes and storms before? is that sun finally allowed the merciful release of death, or is it still there, waiting?
