Sign-snatchers like 'humps'

Somewhere in Columbia County there are likely eight teen-agers bedrooms adorned with road signs bearing messages that, given the right prompting, are downright suggestive.

All, unfortunately, are courtesy of Columbia County taxpayers - because of a tiny difference in definitions.

The in-demand road signs say Speed humps, or some variation. People evidently bring tools, says one resident of the Rivershyre subdivision in Evans, which has lost the most signs. They cant keep "em up.

Actually, its not that bad; the countys director of construction and maintenance, Kevin Lear, says eight of the signs have been swiped - two in Northwoods, the rest in Rivershyre - at a cost of $35-50 each. But the signs disappear nonetheless.

The signs warn motor-ists about new speed-control devices installed in the neighborhoods at the request of residents worried about drivers racing through their streets. The speed bump is small, about 8 inches wide and about 6 inches high, a little bump in the road, that goes all the way across so you have to slow down, but you ease your car across it, Lear explains. The speed hump is about 10 feet wide, and you get whole car almost on top of it as you go over it. They slow you down just as much, because you cant hit it. Your car just isnt jarred. People tend to like that speed-hump thing better than the bumps.

Well, ahem, yeah.

When asked about the juvenile double-entendre of the word hump, the problem with the signs unintentionally naughty wording dawned on Lear. Honest to God, it never occurred to me! he laughed. Maybe it has to everybody else! I guess I am nave.

Newly educated to gutter humor, Lear says perhaps it will be a good idea to stop making distinctions between humps and bumps, at least as far as new signs go.

After all, no one has swiped any bumps. Yet.

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