Photography By Ed Meyer
That’s a heavy word, “vandal.” Trace it back and you find King Geiseric galloping through Rome on a black horse, burning down churches and plundering villas, the plume on his copper helmet flying behind him like dark smoke. Twenty-first century vandalism is not so different, with its serial arsonists and the hieroglyphics of thuggery written stories-high with house paint launched from fire extinguishers. In the mid-’50s, though, it was shocking when teenagers salted a lawn. Here, we see why: It was an era that had mastered polite, pleasant mind control. In fact, this photo ran with an article titled “University City Turns to Psychology to Keep Its Parks Clean,” which noted the Parks Department had erected “72 signs in the city’s parks, all designed as friendly.” But take a second look at that title—U. City had a litter problem, not a teenage Visigoth problem. No one was carving rude phrases into the picnic tables with a butterfly knife, shooting songbirds out of the trees, or setting the trash cans on fire. They were flicking cigarette butts into the bushes and dropping Hershey’s wrappers on the sidewalk. Littering is nasty, for sure, but would a young couple really stop kissing on a park bench because wadded-up wrappers were blowing by in the wind? Would seeing a weather-bleached Mickey Mouse Pez dispenser discarded along the park path really unsettle an elder’s mind? Hats off to the genius at the Parks Department for creating the perfect passive-aggressive, maternal voice for the sign, which worked, we are sure. What we’ll never know, but would love to, is whether Miss Patty Sandhofer (1071 Purcell) and Mr. Ken Morgenthaler (1039 E. Park), were truly in love—or just posed together for propaganda purposes.
