Assistant Managing Editor Bess Winter: Here at CR we spend a lot of time reading excellent fiction, poetry, and non–fiction—but what about other forms? Proposed to you today: the humble sign. Utilitarian and often overlooked, the sign points us in a new direction, assures us that we’ve arrived, or even makes us stop and notice things we wouldn’t otherwise—much like great writing. A sign can be garish or understated. It can be illuminated. It can be hand-painted or laser-cut. It can attract or it can repel.
Sometimes when going about my daily life, I come across a sublime sign. This happens especially often here in Cincinnati: a city that never, ever, throws out its old crap. The impulse on encountering one of these signs is to share it with those who will appreciate it—and, so, this column. Each installment will focus on one sign of note, mostly local but also some from far-off. If we could receive submissions of signs as miCRo contenders, these are signs I would publish.
“I have drunk
the beers
that were in
the cooler
and which
you were probably
saving
for Saturday
Forgive me
they were delicious
so quick
n’ so cold”
—William Carlos Williams
The visitor to Cincinnati will marvel at its array of package stores, often spectacularly named and evocative of a wide swath of American culture and lore. Just around the corner from our CR office and the University of Cincinnati campus is the Mississippi-John-Hurt, Grateful-Dead, and Nick-Cave-approved Staggerlee’s, whose name promises both chaos and infamy to any who shop there. But I’m taken, most, by the Cold-N-Quick: a store whose name is all the advertising it needs.
There are some words and phrases that just feel good to say. Even those who, like me, aren’t really alcohol drinkers can appreciate the crispness of the “C” and “Q” sounds in “cold-n-quick.” They feel cold: almost frozen but still drinkable. They immediately bring to mind a frosted bottle—glass, naturally— nested in a bucket of ice. And, just as it is cold, the name is also quick; the “N” between the two words brings them together faster than an ampersand, or the plus sign so often favored by hipsters who wear leather aprons and run gastropubs, or—heaven forbid—the impossibly slow “and” ever could. It’s beautiful in its simplicity and functionality; it is a poem; I’m thirsty.
That was going to be the end of what I’d planned to say about the Cold-N-Quick, but a recent development has transformed what was an elegant poem into more of a short story:
Complication arises from the sudden appearance, next to the Cold-N-Quick, of this billboard, paid for by the Antioch Fellowship of the Elect which, based on a quick Google search, seems not to be located in Cincinnati, but in Dayton. “OBEY JESUS OR HELL,” it yells. It elaborates with a list of, presumably, those who must obey: “ABORTION; FORNICATORS; LIARS; HYPOCRITES; DRUNKARDS.”
A little context: on November 7, 2023, Ohio voted to enshrine the right to abortion in its state constitution. This billboard was posted immediately after the result of that election, presumably in response. But, to be honest, “abortion” seems tacked on, here, to a message that, by way of proximity, appears to be aimed at the specific clientele of the Cold-N-Quick. The word “DRUNKARDS” is charring over a hot flame, right next to “HYPOCRITES,” thrusting the thirsty customers below into the role of protagonist in a morality play. To cross the threshold is to make a moral decision from which there is no return. Enter the Cold-N-Quick and you enter the gates of Hell. One almost expects Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit to pull up in a stolen jalopy, hunting his next victim.
Some of the best stories are of the old-fashioned, fire-and-brimstone-moral-quandary variety, and this arrangement of signs, too, is deeply publishable, in my opinion. Key to its appeal is the fact that the billboard seems to have the opposite effect from the one intended. The message is so hot, so punitive, and the package store is so cold, so quick: a place where you can get a pack of gum or turn your luck around with a lotto win; an intoxicating release from the scorching inevitability of your own demise. I love the drama of a good story, but the pure poetry of the sign is, in and of itself, refreshment that is only pleasure.
Someone call Robert Frost; I’m not sure which apocalypse I want.
