Neighborhood Character
yard signs
The September swap meet drew its usual crowd to the Hensley driveway, folding tables arranged in a horseshoe and loaded with laminated rectangles of virtue. Megan Chen arrived early, as she always did, her canvas tote already heavy with duplicates she hoped to move. She had two “Immigrants Make This Street Stronger” signs from the spring fundraiser and a slightly faded “Black Trans Lives Matter” that she’d upgraded to the holographic version last month.
“Megan, over here.” David Okonkwo waved her toward his table, where he’d arranged his collection by category. Political solidarity on the left, environmental justice in the center, identity affirmations on the right. “I finally got the ‘Water Is Life’ with the Standing Rock attribution. Original 2016 run.”
“No way.” Megan leaned in to examine it. “What do you want for it?”
“What do you have in neurodivergent representation? Chloe’s been asking for something autism-specific since the Parkinsons put up their ‘Stimming Is Communication’ sign.”
The trade negotiations hummed along as more families arrived, the September air warm enough that the children could play in the cul-de-sac while their parents browsed. The Hendersons brought lemonade. The Wus brought their new baby, strapped to Jason’s chest, and their collection of “Defund” signs from the 2020 era, now considered vintage.
Sarah Park noticed them first. The couple walking up the sidewalk, empty-handed, looking at the tables with the uncertain expressions of tourists who’d wandered into a local festival without knowing the customs.
“That’s them,” she murmured to Megan. “The new people. The Brennans? Breyers? Something like that. Karen mentioned them at book club. Said they seemed nice—but their yard is, well, you know.”
Megan knew. She’d driven past the newly sold house on Maple twice now. The lawn was trim, the landscaping tasteful, the porch decorated with a seasonal wreath. But the yard itself stood bare of any declaration, any announcement of where the household stood on the issues that mattered. It was like a face without expression.
“Someone should help them,” Megan said, though she didn’t move.
The couple, a man in his late thirties with the soft build of someone who worked from home and a woman with prematurely gray streaks she hadn’t bothered to dye, approached David’s table first. They introduced themselves as the Bryces. Tom and Nina. They’d moved from Portland.
“Portland,” David repeated, for the benefit of the crowd, and the word carried weight. Portland was good. Portland suggested baseline alignment at minimum.
“We heard this was the place to get started,” Nina said. She smiled, but her eyes moved across the tables with something that might have been anxiety or might have been calculation. “Our yard is kind of blank right now.”
“Fresh canvas,” Tom added. “We’re not sure where to begin.”
The swap meet had developed, over its years of existence, an informal system for observing newcomers. No one would approach directly with suggestions. That would be too presumptuous, too evangelical. Instead, neighbors would watch what signs a new family gravitated toward, which tables they lingered at, what questions they asked. The selections told a story.
Sarah positioned herself near the beverage table, where she could observe the Bryces’ trajectory. They started with David’s collection, nodding politely at the “Water Is Life” sign but not reaching for it. They moved to the Hendersons’ table, where Marcus had laid out his specialty: intersectional statements that combined two or more identities. “Disabled Queer Joy Exists” in hand-painted letters. “Indigenous Sovereignty Is Climate Justice” with a small footnote crediting the artist.
Nina picked up one sign, turned it over, set it down. Tom asked about pricing, seeming surprised when Marcus explained there was no money involved, only trades, though newcomers could borrow any sign they liked until they had something to contribute.
“We’ll take whatever you recommend,” Nina said.
The swap meet went quiet. This was unprecedented. No one had ever outsourced their selection before. The entire point was the curation, the personal assembly of beliefs into a visible tableau.
Marcus recovered first. “Why don’t you just browse a bit more? See what speaks to you.”
What followed was forty-five minutes of careful, deliberate browsing. The Bryces touched nearly every sign on every table. They asked questions about origins, about the organizations represented, about the specific language choices. Tom took notes on his phone. Nina kept returning to certain tables, reconsidering options she’d passed over initially.
By the time they left, they carried eleven signs between them, bundled carefully into a box Marcus had found in his garage. The neighborhood watched them go, then turned to each other with the unspoken question: What did they take?
The full inventory wouldn’t be confirmed until the next morning, when early joggers passed the Bryce house and witnessed the installation in progress. Eleven signs became fourteen as Nina hammered stakes into the September-soft soil. Tom adjusted angles, stepped back to assess spacing, made micro-corrections.
Megan Chen walked her dog past at 8:15 AM. She slowed as she approached, letting Biscuit sniff the base of a mailbox post while she catalogued the display. “Water Is Life,” original attribution. “Trans Rights Are Human Rights” in the updated font. “Refugees Welcome” with the addition of “in Seven Languages” scrolling along the bottom. And in the center, taking the prime position visible from the street, a custom piece no one at the swap meet recognized: “This Land Belongs to the Ohlone” with GPS coordinates.
Nina looked up from her final adjustments. Soil darkened her knees.
“Looking good,” Megan said. She meant it.
