A Lost Sign for Our Times

Sixteen years ago, Dr. David Polley had a hand-carved sign hanging on the outside wall of his chiropractic office, which was at that time located on the corner of Sunrise and Fair Oaks Boulevards. Sixteen years ago, just a few months after hanging it, the sign disappeared.

Polley commissioned the sign from Stanley Rill, "... a woodcarver, one of those hippie guys driving a van with woodcarvings all over the inside, you know, the Sixties kind of stuff," said Polley. In other words, the sign was one-of-a-kind.

"He charged me $300 or $400 to do it. I had only been in practice about six months, and I put it up on the wall down in my office that my dad hand-built on Sunrise, and two weeks later it was gone. I was bummed out, to say the least, a lot of four-letter words and so on-kind of down on life right then."

From all best guesses, Polley thinks it was a prank. His office was located next to a river raft outlet, and the sign disappeared over a Fourth of July weekend. "It was such a good piece, kind of like an art piece, and it was easy to get to. It was just hanging on a big wire, and I figure this kid had had too many beers while floating down the river and just decided, `hey, what a cool sign,' and then he took it for the wall in his room."

Eventually, Polley moved his practice to the top of the Pennsylvania hill that overlooks his original location. He put up several new signs, and forgot about the old one that depicted a full-canopied oak tree.

But recently, on a hot morning this past July, almost sixteen years to the day after the sign was stolen, a woman stopped into Fair Oaks Chiropractic and asked Polley if he was missing a sign.

"I thought to myself, I've got a sign out front and I've got a sign way down on Sunrise. What's she talking about? And then it hit me. `You don't mean a wood sign do you?' You know, it was one of those things that suddenly hits you. You haven't thought about it in how many years and then, you know, HUH?"

The woman had the sign in the bed of her truck, and she explained that her son had stolen it. "I didn't want to know who she was," Polley laughed. "I was just happy to have the sign back. Her son had had it hanging up in his room, and then it ended up in her garage. And she said she was doing some cleaning to get ready for that garbage collection thing around here, and needed to get the sign out of there."

Polley was surprised at the condition of the returned sign. "It was in really good shape," he said. "You know it's been years, so it had a few cracks, but this friend of mine, who is also a patient, filled in the cracks and repainted it. He put on some UV boat varnish because this side of the building gets direct sunlight in the afternoon, and then we rigged a hook to get the sign up and back on the wall."

On another hot day, only this time when the temperatures soared to record-breaking heights during the middle of August, the emblem of a sturdy oak took its place once again above Fair Oaks Chiropractic.

"The sign is home," Polley says with a beaming smile. "Everything is suddenly as it should be. The sign itself is a sign. Good things are happening."