Sometime around the Fall of 2023, I was driving down a county road headed for Green Cove Springs, the town closest to where I live. Just before I got to the main road heading into the town, I pass a large Commercial marine drilling and bulkhead company named Hammer and Steel. It’s a big operation and there is about an acre sized lot, next to the office building, where they store cranes, trailers and other large tools of their industry. The lot is surrounded by a chain link fence and, on this day, I was surprised to see a large sign which was emblazoned with the image of a hand, middle finger extended and the name BIDEN next to the finger. In the event you didn’t get the message, under the image were the words, spelled out “and fuck you for voting for him”. 

I was surprised to see a blatantly political  and obscene sign on a business. After all, the company can’t assume that all of their customers would approve of the message. I didn’t really have a problem with them being critical of Biden, as this part of Florida is very Republican, even though I thought it was stupid to express ANY political opinion on a business. What bothered me was the obscene and hate filled message. A lot of people drove up and down that road, school busses went by it several times a day. Kids shouldn’t see this as a norm for expressing opinion. 

I decided that it would be pointless to cal the business, as it was likely that I’d be shuffled off to some low level person and not be able to speak to anyone in charge. Same deal with email. I decided to contact our local paper, as I thought that this was newsworthy and the exposure would shame the company into removing the sign. I emailed both the publisher and one of the area’s reporters. The publisher promptly got back to me saying it was a freedom of speech issue and not their business. He also, apparently emailed the reporter and copied me on it. He, the publisher wrote, “this guy wants us to do his dirty work for him, we won’t do it”. The reporter responded that perhaps they should contact the local Police, but the Publisher said “NO”.

So I decided that I should contact the local Police and was told the same thing, that it was a freedom of speech thing and they couldn’t do anything about it. I told them that it was NOT protected speech, as the “Fuck you for voting for him” was an implied threat and targeted Biden Voters, which was a specific group and, as such, was considered a “Hate Crime” and was actionable. The Police person on the phone responded with a “Huh?” and said, we can’t do anything about it. Sorry, and then hung up.

I decided my best course of action would be to write a proper, business style letter, addressed to the Owner, Manager, President or whatever. So I started researching the company to get the right name. I found that the company was a Franchise and the parent company was in Missouri. I got the names and addresses and sent formal letters to both the President of the company at the Corporate headquarters and another letter to the manager of the local office. I noted on each letter that I was sending copies to each place. 

A few days later, the sign came down, and a few days after that, i got a letter from the President of the Corporate office offering his sincere apologies and stating that he agreed that the sign was in extremely poor taste. He said it would be taken down and the person responsible would be reprimanded. Obviously, I felt pretty good about the result and was glad that I had taken action. 

Several days later a friend came to my house to visit and asked me what I thought about the sign…I told him that the sign had been taken down. He laughed and said “No, this is a NEW sign, it’s pretty big and says Fuck Paul”. It didn’t actually read that way, but was a large image of a hand, middle finger extended with P A U L spelled out down the the middle finger. I thought that he was kidding, because I had told him the whole story, but he insisted that there was a new sign, so I drove down there and got to see it for myself. I was pleased to have caused someone to spend money, probably a LOT of money to have made the sign and posted it along the road, I took photos and went home laughing. the next day, that sign, too, was gone. I regretted not having taken it myself. But at least I have the photo and a great story to tell.