A SIGN OF THE INDEPENDENT INSURANCE AGENCY TIMES

A SIGN OF THE INDEPENDENT INSURANCE AGENCY TIMES - by Jack Johnson

While shopping "The World's Longest Yard Sale" along Hwy 127 recently I saw something that made me think. I saw a Progressive insurance sign. One like I used to have hanging at the Independent Insurance Agency I worked at. I asked the guy how much he wanted for it. He said, "That sign was in perfect condition until I dropped it when I was setting stuff up out here. The back of it lights up...or at least it used to light up until I dropped it. It might not light up now at all. I'll take twenty-bucks for it".

I was in Clarkrange, Tennessee. The water tower there says, "Home of the Buffaloes". If you keep up with Tennessee high school sports you know that the Lady Buffaloes are a highly successful, multi-time state champion girls' basketball team. I have always wondered how a young girl reacts to being known as a Lady Buffalo but that was not my main concern on this day.?

You can find all kinds of stuff at the annual Hwy 127 yard sale. All kinds of stuff includes signage of all types. Some people collect old Coke signs, old Sinclair gasoline signs with the cool dinosaur on them, and pretty much any kind of old, metal advertising sign. Usually only someone in the insurance industry would be interested in an old insurance sign. Reason being, most everyone else in the free world hates insurance and does not want to nail up a metal sign reminding them of it.

Years ago, you could find the highly collectible, ancient insurance fire marks at this very yard sale. A fire mark was a sign you put on your door to let the fire department know that your house was insured. That way, if a bunch of houses were on fire at the same time your house got priority because the fire department knew that they would get paid for putting it out first. It was kind of like how health insurance works today.

I have not seen a fire mark at this yard sale since eBay came into existence. I am also pretty sure that everyone I ever knew that had a fire mark collection is dead. I bought a big Mexican Coca-Cola sign at this yard sale one year. I assumed it said "Coke is It" but I never researched that. I took French in high school and there was no Dora the Explorer to school us in Spanish back then. They taught some Spanish on Sesame Street at the time but the only languages I picked up on quickly were whatever those languages Cookie Monster and Mr. Snuffleupagus were speaking.

I bought an old, green Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency sign the same day just because it had a good story behind it. I asked the guy how he acquired the TWRA sign and he told me a story about how he had some kind of deal with a guy that replaced the signs for the state. He said these types of signs were supposed to be destroyed and no one was supposed to own them. I could not figure out why he seemed nervous talking about the sign. He had a $100.00 price sticker on it. As I was leaving, he said, "Hey...I'll take seven-bucks for it. I just want it out of here".?

The Mexican Coca-Cola sign and the TWRA sign are not in my possession any more. I gave them away to a guy that later gave them to friends of his. That guy asked me, "Why did you buy those signs?" I told him I was looking for insurance signs and could not find any. The next best thing I could do was to buy some other random signs to lean against the wall on top of the other signs in my, once massive, metal sign collection. I do not remember if "Hoarders" ever did a show on just pure sign collecting. I would have popped a tape in my 12:00 flashing VCR if they did. The one on the bottom of my stack of VCRs with tapes stuck in them, beside my Golden Corral take-out carrier collection, next to the room all the cats live in.

I did not buy the Progressive sign. The one I had just like it I gave to an Independent Agent that is still selling Progressive today. I still have in my possession the last version of the Progressive Insurance sign that also featured the words "Independent Agent." Progressive traded out the words "Independent Agent" for "Local Agent" years ago. I assume, probably correctly, Progressive did that to steer customer's thinking so they might figure Progressive was a captive agency. Just like Sal Tessio told Tom Hagen in "The Godfather", "Tell Mike it was only business. I always liked him."

What got me thinking when I saw this busted up Progressive sign was how I had never seen one of these at the countless yard sales I have attended. I wondered how it got there. The guy was really busy with some other customers so I never got the chance to ask him about it. This was a very modern sign. One that an agent could still use and display prominently. Did the agent sell too much of that 7% commission Super Saver tier back in the day or what? How would Flo react? All the other rusted signs and assorted junk around it carbon dated back to the GEICO caveman era. Peter Lewis would have choked on his roach clip if he had seen this.

I stared at this scratched up sign like I would stare at an old girlfriend that had been in an accident. She was not pretty anymore but we had been close a long time ago. I began to doubt the story of the young yard sale entrepreneur. If the sign was perfect when he brought it out there, then how was the front and back of it damaged as well as one of the sides? It would have had to bounce at least three times and then rusted on the big dent on the side in less than a week after he dropped it. If there was a state or national hotline for sign abuse, I would have called and reported it. I know however, once they heard it was an insurance sign, I would be placed on hold for a long time. The Icee and Ethyl gasoline signs would be given priority.

Please do not think I am a Progressive insurance basher. Save the one time they really screwed up a claim up for a close friend of mine, I am one of Progressive's all-time biggest fans. In addition to my Progressive insurance sign, I still have a cardboard cutout of Flo. It is the one where she is making the "o.k. sign" with her fingers. Times have changed and the o.k. sign has taken on a much different meaning now. I will be the first person to defend Flo and vouch for the fact that she was making the o.k. sign just to assure everyone, with the exception of my close friend, that everything would be o.k. like with a Progressive insurance claim or something.

I have even been to the famed Progressive "bunker" in Mayfield Village, Ohio. That is where I asked former Progressive president, chairman and chief executive officer Glenn Renwick if I could have someone take a picture of he and I with my new 3.1-megapixel digital camera. He smiled and said, "I guess it's o.k. as long as you don't upload it to the internet or anything." I thanked him and told him I had seen him on Fox News. He is a really nice guy. After I slowly loaded that picture up on Myspace, I was shocked that none of my friends said anything about it. Sometime later I put it up on Facebook and, same thing, nobody commented. It was like the general social media public just did not care about the head of a major insurance company. However, my picture with "The Six-Million Dollar Man" Lee Majors continues to get a great reaction.

I am also a fan of Progressive because they sponsored professional wrestling.?WWE's SMACKDOWN show to be specific.?Insurance companies and professional wrestlers have a lot in common. They both take a lot of risks. They are both good guys and bad guys at times depending on the situation. This poor, cracked beyond repair, Progressive sign looked like Hulk Hogan had leg dropped it and then Sgt. Slaughter threw it over the top rope in a Battle Royal for the Rural Tennessee SR-22 Heavyweight Title.

Coca-Cola will come to your town if you contact them about restoring an old Coke advertising sign painted on the side of a building. They will send a couple of highly skills painters from Atlanta to your place to restore it. I was told they do not even charge anything for their work sometimes. That is a smart move by Coke. They do not want their brand all scratched up and cracked. I thought about the possibility of Progressive doing something similar. Actually...just a $20 bill would have cured this problem. Might have talked the guy down to $15. A drop off box somewhere for old or unwanted Progressive signs and promotional materials would work. Maybe place some of those boxes in Ohio or North Carolina. That would give Baker Mayfield somewhere to put his old stuff.

The Five Man Electrical Band had a hit song about signs back in 1971. Progressive's spokesperson Flo was born in 1970. If she told you 1980 or 1985 you would believe her. The song about signs went on and on about how there were signs everywhere. Think about how many signs have been added to the world since the early 70s. The odds of a Progressive sign eventually showing up somewhere along the 690 miles between Addison, Michigan and Gadsden, Alabama during the "World's Longest Yard Sale" were pretty good.

There is not a moral to this story. This ain't?"Aesop's Fables".?However, if you have an old insurance company sign in your possession, please do not let it end up like this Progressive sign. If you are not going to display it proudly with the jukebox, pinball machine and the pool table in your Man Cave, or Pronoun Cave, at least pass it on to the next insurance agent. Be like a good neighbor, keep your sign in good hands and let semi-brightness of the one working blub lighted insurance signs Flo forever.?