Small engine repair, taxes done

Like fiddleheads in soggy woods, spring in Maine also brings a fresh crop of roadside signs advertising home businesses.

Small stands selling cucumbers, squash and corn on the honor system have been around for years, but lately the proliferation of at-home professions has branched out and now often takes on a decidedly high-tech or mechanical spin.

What is more amazing, though, than even the fact of how many people have little businesses on the side is the combination of skills these roadside signs betray.

Near Norway, Maine, a while back I saw a sign offering “Live bait, worms, computer service.”

You have to wonder if one day some old fisherman came in, noted the night crawlers he used the week before had caught a wicked “keepah” togue, and matter-of-factly asked the proprietor if he thought he could do anything with a balky 340ZX 50 terrabyte hard drive.

Recently I saw a sign advertising “Small Engine Repair — taxes done.”

In Gardiner, a fellow just opened up a hair salon/television repair shop. I guess the idea there is to tinker with the set and get a wicked shock off the transformer which causes the hair to stand right on end, making it easier to cut.

The hair angle has repeated itself in Ellsworth where a salon in the Mill Mall notes it has 14 chairs and is also a dry cleaning drop-off. Make sure when they ask if you want any conditioner that you read the label carefully.

Down East off Route 1, I once spied a sign looking for customers interested in “DVD movies/slab bacon.”

They have probably branched out into popcorn and farm fresh eggs, toast and automatic transmission repair by now for all I know.

In addition to the above, you often see the words, “custom sawing, doll hospital, llama wool, small engines fixed, worms, bait, crawlers, piglets, chickens, rabbits, goats milk, gardens tilled, fresh cheese and palms read, all in league with the word, “crafts.”

I have yet to fully understand exactly what “crafts” are except I know it often involves beads, yarn, gallons of white glue and ridiculously long hours on the part of someone who doesn’t get cable.

I don’t know why “crafts” always seem to be sold out of converted garages. No doubt the person responsible started out simply with a sign at the end of his or her driveway advertising “Poodle grooming/garages converted to ‘crafts’ shops.”

The signs, themselves, reveal a lot about the proprietor. The neater and more cleanly lettered the sign, the older the proprietor.

The absolutely neatest ones are those of the retired guys who sell “camp wood.” Lumber at the home center isn’t stacked as straight as the neatly-tied $3 bundles of firewood set out to the side of the road by a retired guy. The best examples of this can be seen right here on Mount Desert Island in the displays put out seasonally by members of the Otter Creek Camp Wood Cartel. They may protest, but I don’t think it is any accident that everyone there charges exactly the same. In such a competitive environment, neat stacking becomes the only way for the consumer to differentiate between suppliers.

The whole roadside sign practice is reminiscent of the humor shown by the first convenience stores that innocently advertised “Eat here, get gas.”

The Hulls Cove General Store in Bar Harbor honors this fine roadside tradition with clever slogans that change each week.

Some of my favorites include “Summer people, some are not” and the Fourth of July standby, “Welcome to Lubec, maps inside.”

During the controversy over whether tourists were welcome in Mount Desert, the sign suggested “Be sure to visit Northeast Harbor.”

The truth is that home business roadside signs are testimony to the fact that Mainers are in general an industrious lot and that most folks, particularly in rural areas, just can’t get by on what they make in a 40-hour work week alone.

I think to be really successful, some backyard businessperson might try a new combination for which there should be a huge market. All they have to do is put a small sign out by the road advertising “lawn mowers fixed, crafts, taxes done, roadside signs painted - while you wait.”