This story occurred some time in 1983. I am a little unsure on the exact time after 40 years.

In 1982, I was 16 years old and starting school as a Junior at Portage Lakes Joint Vocational School and living with my family in what was Green Township and is now the City of Green. In the 80’s Green Township was a suburban area between Akron and Canton, it was essentially the sticks. I had moved to Green in 1980, while still attending Archbishop Hoban High School in Akron. I had lived in the Firestone Park area of Akron from 1968, when our family moved from Nova Scotia until 1981 when we moved to Green. After my Sophomore year at Hoban, I was done with 10 years of Catholic school and registered for the vocational school to start the following year. The vocational school, just down the road from Green High School, serviced 3 rural areas, Green, Coventry and Manchester Townships, hence the “joint” in the name. The school was referred to to, by nearly everyone, as “The Joint” like it was a prison. I had not attended school in Green up to this point but because we lived in the school district, I was eligible.

The Summer before I started school at “The Joint” I met a few kids my age that lived in the neighborhood. One guy named Alan (Zeke) lived across the street from me, Hubie lived in the house behind Alan on Laburnum Dr which was the next street over from ours and John, who also lived on Laburnum but down the street from Hubie. There were a few others I met later from the neighborhood, but these were the first three. John and I became friends after our initial meeting and I consider him my closest friend to this day.

John and I met at Alan’s house playing basketball in his driveway. I was never good at basketball, or most sports in general, but there wasn’t much else to do. After the initial game, John was over at my house (we also had a basketball hoop in the driveway) or at Alan’s house. So we played and talked and got to know one another. We learned that we shared a similar sense of humor and I specifically remember him asking me one day if I’d ever seen a TV show called SCTV? I was vaguely aware the show existed but had never watched it. I can still hear him animatedly telling me a sketch from the show where someone was telling a kid a bedtime story, only the stories were not scary enough. Then the storyteller told him one so scary he died, frozen in fright, his hair now white. It was actually some time before I saw this episode, but I did start watching SCTV regularly from then on.

I’ll skip ahead now, John went to Green High School and I was in the Drafting program at “the Joint” through 1982 and 1983. At some point John had started dating a girl named Chris. Chris and John also shared a sense of humor, maybe even more than he and I did. They got along and after they were dating for a bit I jokingly asked “Does she have any friends?” as you do when your friend is dating someone they like. I recall John saying that he didn’t think I’d like any of her friends. Then a moment later, he says there is one I might like after all, and that she “had big ta-ta’s”.

I’m not apologizing for this, we were idiots.

I was not taking any of this seriously but having an introduction like this definitely made me feel less anxious for sure. Shortly after this conversation, there was an arrangement for all four of us to meet and go out. We did all meet and what we did, I completely forget but I liked Ruth and she seemed interested in me and that lead to my going over to her house to hang out. That may be another story for another time. I did also attempt at taking her out on a real date, just the two of us. That date did not go well in my mind, but somehow we continued to talk, hang out at each others house and get into the shenanigans that 16 to 18 year olds get into. Sometimes all four of us did something together but it was mostly John and Chris doing something and Ruth Ann and I doing our own thing. All four of us had actually gone to our Senior Prom together, to be ironic, before that was a thing. Really it was to point out the cliche things everyone else was doing and taking so seriously, which we didn’t. Then we all stayed out as late as possible and then we all drove together to Cedar Point the next day.

But this story is not about the first date, Prom or Cedar Point this was about the harebrained idea I had for a Birthday gift for Ruth Ann.

Once, when all four of us were in the car together, Ruth Ann recognized the road we were on and asked us all if we had noticed the tractor crossing sign before? I don’t believe anyone else knew what she was talking about, but as we passed the tractor crossing sign she pointed it out and then explained how odd it looked. Now, these tractor crossing signs were common in rural areas, there were lots of farms out in Green at that time. I will say, I don’t think any of us got the joke, but she thought the sign was hilarious. Then every time we passed one of these signs from then on, she would point out how odd it looked. How the driver of the tractor looked like just a torso driving, how his arm was way out of proportion to reach the steering wheel, the other details like the brim of his hat flipping down in the back and up in the front. Even if we didn’t exactly get the joke, we found it funny that she found it so funny.

Unfortunately, the image at the top of the page is not an exact replica of the one we saw back then, but it was the closest I could find online. It does still look odd though.

So, I don’t exactly remember when or how this happened, but I thought I had a brilliant idea for a birthday gift for Ruth Ann. I shared this idea with John.

“I want to steal a tractor crossing sign as a Birthday gift for Ruth Ann!”

“How are you going to do that?”

“How hard can it be? I’ll take some tools and we’ll go at night on a road that doesn’t get much traffic”

This is just a wild guess at how that conversation went because it was usually John talking me into some harebrained scheme as that was the way our friendship went. But, this time I was sure this was just going to be one of the greatest displays of young love and I needed John’s help. Since it was usually me poking holes in the flawed logic of whatever he was trying to talk me into, the plan to do this moved forward quite rapidly as I recall.

We had decided on the same country road that Ruth Ann first pointed out the tractor crossing sign to us. There were very few houses on that stretch of road and where the sign was there was nothing but woods on either side. It was long and straight, so we would easily see a car’s headlights coming before they saw us. We agreed on a night to do this and John showed up in a black turtleneck and black gloves like he was in Mission Impossible (the TV show, not the Tom Cruise movies). I of course, was an even bigger idiot and I was wearing camouflage clothing from my foray into bow hunting a few years prior. I also grabbed all the tools I thought I’d need, which I think may have just been a pair of pliers. I just assumed the sign was fastened to the pole with a nut and bolt, all I needed to do was to unscrew the bolt and I’d have the best gift ever. We were both giddy with excitement over this plan.

It was late at night when we left and we used John’s car and drove out to the spot. We passed the sign and decided that parking the car right at the sign may not be the best idea. So we drove a way down the road until we came to a driveway at the nearest house. We pulled in the very end of this driveway, just so the car was not sticking out in the road. Since it was very late at night, we assumed no one would be coming or going. The plan was, we’d run down to where the sign was, get it off the pole and run back to the car with it and be home soon after. If we saw a car come down the road all we had to do was jump into the woods at the side of the road. It was foolproof.

Let me now take a moment to discuss how the Ohio Department of Transportation installs traffic signs like the one we were planning to steal. The image above gives an indication of how these are constructed. This diagram also says the bottom of the sign is 7 feet minimum from the ground, and the one I was climbing up that night had to be 8-9 feet from the bottom of diamond shaped sign to the ground. The sign post consists of two galvanized steel “U channel” posts, like you see in the cross section above. The first of these posts are buried quite deep in a hole that is then filled with concrete, the second section is then bolted to the bottom pole. The second section then has the sign bolted to the top.

The other thing that ODOT does when it bolts the sign to the U channel post is they then hammer the end of bolt after being fastened with a nut. This apparently prevents the nut from coming loose or being removed.

So, John and I have our getaway car stowed away in a secure place and he in black and me in camouflage, we made our way stealthily down to the sign. Once we arrive at the sign I realize how high off the ground it actually is. It doesn’t look that high as you’re driving by it at 40 miles per hour in a car. I have John be the lookout and I start up the now rusting pole to get the sign. Once I finally made my way up with John’s help, I can now see that the bolts were not just bent as in the image above, they are demolished. It was like the ODOT worker was taking out some frustration on these bolts after installing the sign. I see my dilemma immediately but I still tried removing the bolts but I could only get get a few turns and knew they were not coming off.

I get down off the pole to the ground and I am describing to John what I saw up top as my mind is racing on possible solutions. Did we have a hacksaw at home? If so, why didn’t I bring that? I was so sure this was going to work, it was the perfect gift!

Standing next to the pole, I noticed that the bolts that fasten the top section to the section that is securely in the ground with concrete, are not hammered or bent. I guess the ODOT worker that installed the sign had no more frustration after he secured the sign. I see this and quickly explain to John that we have to take the whole top section, sign and pole, with us.

I start working with the pliers and unscrewing the bolt as John acts as lookout. It’s at about this point we hear a car horn honking from way down the road. There are no headlights from that direction, but just a long beep of a car horn. After a few seconds, the horn goes off again and then again. The honking gets a bit more insistent and that’s when John says he better run down and check it out. I remain at the sign and keep at the rusty nut and bolt. After a little while, John comes back and explains that apparently the owners of the house of the driveway we parked in, came home. They of course do not recognize the car parked in the end of their drive and start honking like crazy to get the attention of the owner so they can pull in. I do not remember what John said to them, but he was always quite good at talking his way out of situations so whatever he told them, they accepted. John pulled out of their drive, drove the car part way towards me and pulled it over onto the shoulder as far as he could. By the time he returned, I was nearly done.

So we now have the sign and pole and we each grabbed an end and ran to the car. We placed the tractor crossing sign end into the back seat as far as it would go and there was four or more feet of pole sticking out the passenger side window. We tried figuring out way we could get it all the way in the car, but it was simply too long. We just decided to risk driving home with it sticking out like that, we were this far into the heist by now. We assumed that since it was late and dark, we may have a chance. It must have been quite humorous to see, the car with that pole sticking out the window and me trying to hang my arm out over it as if that would fool anyone.

We miraculously made it back to John’s house without incident. Now all we had to work on was getting the sign off of the pole. We attacked this thing with everything we could find in the garage. We were making such a racket with a hammer at one point, John’s Mom poked her head into the garage from the door into the house. She just looked at both of us, looked at the sign and the tools scattered about and then closed the door without saying a word.

Now, we finally had the sign off the pole. I wrapped the sign in newspaper and then waited until I could give Ruth Ann her present.

As you can probably guess, this was not accepted as some over the top gift based on a joke all four of us were privy to. We had brought the sign over to Ruth Ann’s house for her to open and luckily her parents were not in the room when she started to open it. As soon as she recognized what it was, she looked at me like I was crazy. Not the reaction I was expecting.

“What if my parents see this!?”

“Ummmm”

Now, I liked Ruth Ann’s parents and they seemed to tolerate me but they were very conservative and a tad on the strict side when it came to their daughter. I had not thought this through I just assumed that it would be accepted as the best the display of my affection my 17 year old brain could come up with.

So, the sign was secreted away into the storage area of the attic that also served as Ruth Ann’s bedroom. I could see that there was no way she could have explained away such a gift to her parents. I think that her Father eventually found it in the attic eventually and asked her about it, I think she indicated that John and I bought it at a flea market but I somehow doubt he bought that.