They Are Putting Them on the Lampposts

I have made it my practice, for the better part of thirty years, to take a morning walk along Northampton Street. I do this for my health. I do this for my constitution. I do this because a man who does not observe his own community cannot claim to be its guardian. On the morning of February 6th, in cold that had not yet decided whether it was finished with us, I came within three feet of an object that I was not prepared to encounter before breakfast.

A sticker. Approximately two inches square. Affixed — deliberately, I must stress, not blown there by wind — to the lamppost at the corner of Northampton and 4th. A green reptile. Grinning. The words Crackodile & Friends printed beneath it in a font I can only describe as aggressively cheerful. The cold did nothing to diminish it. If anything, it seemed to thrive.

I stopped. I photographed it. I stood there for what I am told, by a passing woman with a dog, was nearly four minutes.

I want to be precise about what troubled me most. It was not the sticker itself. I have seen the website. I have reviewed the merchandise. I am not a man who startles easily. What troubled me was the geometry of the thing. Someone had put it there. Someone had walked this same street — my street, a street I have walked since Gerald Jr. was in the fourth grade — and had made a decision. They had reached into a pocket or a bag, peeled a backing, and pressed that grinning face onto a public fixture with, I can only assume, some satisfaction.

That is not accidental. That is a campaign.

I have since learned, through channels I am not prepared to elaborate on at this time, that similar materials may have appeared in other cities. I do not yet have documentation. I am seeking it. This is how it begins — not with a television broadcast, not with a formal announcement, but with materials appearing where children could see them, placed by hands that believed no one was watching.

Someone is always watching. That has been the founding principle of this organization since 1989, and I see no reason to revise it now.

I removed the sticker from the lamppost. I have retained it as evidence. It is in a labeled envelope in the third drawer of my filing cabinet, between my notes on the 1993 investigation and my correspondence with the school board regarding the Smeezy distribution incident. If anyone requires documentation, I have it.

What I am asking — what I am urging — is simple: look at your lampposts. Look at your bus stops. Look at the backs of street signs and the sides of newspaper boxes and every flat surface in your neighborhood that a person with two free hands and no apparent concern for community standards might have visited. If you find one of these stickers, document it. Note the location. Note the date. Write to us.

We are building a picture. The picture is only beginning to develop. And I can tell you, having now seen it from a distance of three feet on a February morning before the street had fully woken up, that it is not a picture I am comfortable with.

This will not be my last missive on this subject.

Vigilantly yours,
Gerald P. Whitmore
Director of Community Standards, Moral Outreach Society
Easton, Pennsylvania — Est. 1989