Stingl: Sweet spot spreading on Bay View block
Even silly stories begin somewhere, and this one starts with Debra Pyne passing an antique shop on Kinnickinnic Ave. and spotting an old farm sign that says "SWEET," as in buy some sweet corn.
"It made me smile," she said. So she bought the sign and hung it on her front porch last year. Debra didn't know it at the time, but she had just planted a kernel that would sprout in a spontaneous and playful way on her Bay View block.
A year passed. Let's call it a germination period.
"One morning in late summer I was having my tea, and I went out on my porch and looked across the street and there was SWEETER and next to that SWEETEST. It was the funniest thing," Debra said.
What she soon discovered is that her neighbors saw her sign as a creative challenge. Here's how Georgia Kowalski describes a conversation over coffee with her next door neighbor, Ken Reibel:
"Ken said, 'You know, I keep staring at Debra's sign. I think I'll put SOUR on my house.' It morphed into SWEET, SWEETER, SWEETEST."
And it grew from there. Pretty soon the 3300 block of S. New York Ave. was signs, signs, everywhere signs, dangling and propped on porches.
"People often ask what's going on," said Debra's husband, Phil. "It's just something that neighbors do because we know each other and we're just kind of goofing around."
Let's see, there's also SWEETLY up the street, and over there is SWEET♥ and SALTY, BITTER, SAUCY, SPICY, 2SWEETS (for a family that recently had a second child) and, a little off the theme, BIRD SANCTUARY.
"I've been calling our street Adjective Avenue," Debra said.
Another neighbor, Mike Benter, let me know about this in an email. "I don't have a sign, and given that my household is not participating, I guess we'd be SOUR if we were ever to join the crowd," he quipped.
Ken made the SWEETEST sign and hung it from his second-story porch. Georgia's husband, Mike, who is retired, turned scrap lumber into their SWEETER sign and made many of the other signs on the block. He painted them yellow and used a stencil borrowed from Debra to spray the black 4-by-3-inch letters.
"It just started, this thing," Debra said. "It has caused a lot of interest in the neighborhood. It's so Bay View."
She took down her sign recently to make room for Christmas decorations. This met with resistance. You really do need the root word out there.
"The other guys were like, 'Hey, now it doesn't make any sense,'" Phil said.
So SWEET is back up.
When I asked Mike Kowalski the why question about all this, he thought for a second before replying, "I don't know if it's much more than that we're good neighbors."
He has lived on the block 41 years. The Pynes,who have a daughter, Lucy, are at 22 years. Ken and family are at 17. This is the kind of block where neighbors consider themselves family, and they share life's joys and sorrows.
The signs stand for that joy and serve as performance art.
"We're just spreading the love around a little bit," Georgia said. "Some were gifts, some were requests and some were surprises."
She has a list of about eight additional signs, and which neighbors might want to display them.
"We'll have to get some more wood."
Contact Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or jstingl@jrn.com. Connect with my public page at Facebook.com/Journalist.Jim.Stingl
