Another from Don Knuth’s collection of diamond signs, this one collected in Mexico:

Location: N16°55.642′, W96°21.618′ photo taken 2008.02.26 in Oaxaca, Mexico by Paula Darwent Near entrance of Mercado de Artesanias (Calle Reforma), San Pablo Villa de Mitla
Perhaps this sign is supposed to warn us against water on the road. Or mirages on the road.
But when I saw it, I thought of this:

Pancho Villa, by Ricardo Fernandez, at the Brooklyn Art Project
José Doroteo Arango Arámbula – better known by his pseudonym Francisco Villa, or by his nickname, Pancho Villa
Or maybe this one:

General Emiliano Zapata in 1914
The sign is in Oaxaca, an area that rallied around Zapata.
There’s gotta be a story behind that shotgun blast spray on the sign. Even more appropriate to the stories of Zapata and Villa, yes?
I wonder what the sign is warning us about?
More:
- Signs: Cthulu’s return? Don’t kick jelly fish? (timpanogos.wordpress.com)
- ” Emiliano Zapata And The Mexican Revolution ” Is An Excellent Book By R. Conrad Stein (kidbooksreview.wordpress.com)
- In pictures: Mexico’s revolutionary art (bbc.co.uk)
- “Cattleman’s sign, Montrose”
- “Random signs,” at Thought Snax (click it, it’s worth it)
Dear Readers, you’d do well to see this New York Times Magazine profile of Don Knuth. He is a hero for our times, a man for whom the term “Renaissance Man” seems too meager.
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[…] Signs: Pancho Villa Highway? Zapata Road? (Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub) […]
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Road lost to earthquake being one you actually found?
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It looks like a flood warning. The last time I visited Mexico in 1980 (pre-kids when I had a tiny bit of money), the weirdest warning we came across were the deslave signs. One meaning for deslave is landslide, but when you saw it on a Mexican road, it could mean anything from “pothole” to “bump” to “when you get around this corner, half of the road will have slid away due to an earthquake.”
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