Remembering a Strange Sign

  MyGuy's Granddad had a lot of stories.  Like most of us, we didn't listen as closely as we should have, but MyGuy was remembering this story last night, and, as usual with us, it led to a minilesson in communicating.

 

Family History

  One of the many jobs Granddad had in his youth involved working for a railroad.  No doubt he was remembering this sign from the RR job.

  Signs in the early twentieth century were as prone to losing letters as signs today.  The complete sign would've read,  

 Social History

   What was a hotel runner?  Granddad wasn't too explicit about that; the main thing was the funny sign.  But apparently the runner's job was to go to the station & promote his hotel for the travelers as opposed to the competitors' hotels. 
  And exactly what the RR wanted the runners to notice, again, is lost.

In Our Living Room

   i had missed the story from Granddad & was having trouble visualizing the sign, so i grabbed a piece of scrap paper & pencil to write down what MyGuy was saying.  It wasn't as fancy as the first sign here, but i began with a box and definitely made a sign.
  MyGuy was amused.  He pointed out that we have very different brains (duh!).  i have more need to visualize something, perhaps more literally.  He would have simply written the string of letters if he had wanted to see what was going on.

MiniLesson

  So it is with all the various people we meet and work with.  Actually MyGuy was a little surprised that i had trouble with the hot to hotel connection, but extremely surprised that i needed to make a boxed sign to visualize the difference.  i suppose i would've figured it out with a simple string of letters, but the sign seemed as obvious to me as nonobvious to MyGuy.  And for other people, the accomodation would be indispensible.