A WORD FROM THE CURATOR

I came home from the Army in 1968 and went to work on a paving crew, and I've been on highway work in Missouri ever since, the last twenty-two years as a foreman. A good share of it has been I-70, between Kansas City and St. Louis, tearing out old concrete and putting down new. Missouri likes to say it let the first interstate contract in the country, back in 1956. Some of my career has been spent replacing the pavement from around then, so I believe it.

Last spring my daughter Gloria, who teaches school in Kansas City and knows her way around a computer, sat me down and showed me her class's home page. Then she showed me a few more. Then a few more. About every other one had an under construction sign on it: a little man with a jackhammer, or a barricade, or a sign that blinked.

Now, I have put out a lot of construction signs. I know what they're for and what they're not for. So one Sunday in May, Gloria and I went through three hundred home pages and counted. A hundred and twelve had a sign up. Nine of those signs gave a date for when the work would be done. Two of the dates hadn't passed yet.

That's how the museum got started. Below are the six pieces in the collection, all from the free clip art that GeoCities.us gives its members, each one in its own case, with a brass plate and my review. Between the cases, a few rules from the job. In the other room, Real Signs, Web Signs, I explain how the real ones work.

Please don't tap on the glass.

The foreman's review. What we have here is a man running a pavement breaker. My crews don't say jackhammer, but I'll allow it. Hard hat: yellow, on straight. Good. Shirt: orange, so the traffic can see him. Good. Blue jeans: fine.

Now the write-up. No safety glasses, and a breaker throws chips. No hearing protection, and I can tell you from experience what a breaker does to your ears; I say "what?" about forty times a day. And he's smiling. Nobody smiles on a breaker.

Look at the dirt under his feet. He has been working that same spot on thousands of home pages for years now and the hole is no deeper. On my job, a man who stays on one spot that long has either hit rebar or he's waiting for lunch.

Grade: C. Send him to the safety meeting.

The foreman's review. This one is nearly right. Orange and white stripes on the rail, which is what we use; on a real one the white reflects your headlights at night. A warning light on top, and it blinks, also correct. Two good legs on feet. I'd put it out on a job.

What a barricade is for: it closes something. A lane, a ramp, a road. It says "not here." So when I see one sitting at the top of somebody's whole home page, I want to ask: closed? Then why did you give me the address?

If one part of your page isn't open yet, put the barricade there, at that part. Not at the front door.

Grade: B+. Good equipment, usually set in the wrong place.

The foreman's review. The smallest piece in the collection. You may want your reading glasses. Orange, a white band around the top, a black base. On a real cone that white band is reflective, for night work, so whoever drew this was paying attention.

Here's the thing about a cone: one cone doesn't do anything. Cones work in a line. We set them out in a long, gradual taper so traffic can slide over a lane without anybody having to stand on the brakes. One cone sitting by itself on a road usually means it fell off the truck. One cone sitting by itself on a home page means about the same.

Grade: A for the drawing. Incomplete for every page I've seen it on.

The foreman's review. Yellow and black stripes on the slant, and they crawl along sideways. This is a background tile, so you lay it down as many times as you need, the way we lay pavers.

Out on the road, you'll see black and yellow stripes on a marker in front of something solid you could hit: a bridge pier, a concrete wall, the end of a guardrail. They mean "this does not move, and you will lose." They don't crawl. Nothing on a real job moves except the equipment and the traffic, and you want both of those where you can see them.

That said, I've got a band of these across the top and bottom of this museum, and I'll admit I like to watch them go. A foreman's allowed one weakness.

Grade: B. Wrong job, nice work.

The foreman's review. The big one. UNDER CONSTRUCTION in fat block letters, every letter a different color, and the colors roll down the line like a string of Christmas lights. It's cheerful, I'll give it that.

A real sign is two colors, black on orange, so a man doing 65 can read it at a glance. You can read this one fine. The trouble is it doesn't tell you anything. Under construction till when? Building what? A sign that doesn't say anything is just decoration, and decoration is the one thing you never put out in a work zone.

Grade: D. Loud and says nothing. I've worked with fellows like that.

The foreman's review. The best piece in the collection, and I've given it some thought. A diamond, which is the shape for a warning. A black figure of a man with a shovel, and over three frames he digs in, lifts, and throws the dirt onto the pile. He is working, which puts him ahead of Exhibit 1.

One thing wrong, and it isn't small: it's yellow. Yellow is the color for warnings that stay put, like a curve, a hill or a deer crossing. On a job, this sign is orange. Orange means temporary. Orange means there are people out there today. The other room explains why.

Grade: A-minus. Paint it orange and it's an A.

1. A work zone has an end date, and so should your sign.
2. Don't put the sign up before the crew shows.
3. Finish one lane before you tear up the next.
4. When the job's done, the signs come down that day.
5. If you close a road, show them the way around.

WHEN TO TAKE YOURS DOWN

People write and ask me, kind of sheepish, whether they should take their sign down. Here's my checklist. If any one of these is true, the sign comes down tonight:

• The date on it has passed. (Or there never was a date. See Rule 1.)
• Nothing on the page has changed in a month.
• You can't say, in one sentence, what's being built.
• The sign is on the front page, and the front page works fine.
• You put it up because everybody else had one.

"But Gene, a home page is never finished." I know it. Neither is I-70. That's exactly why you don't need a sign: everybody already knows. What you want instead is a line that tells people what's new, with a date on it. "Added the fishing pictures, September 12." That one sentence does more for a visitor than every jackhammer man on the Web.

If you've got real work going on, a section you're actually building this week, then put a sign on that section, say what's coming and when, and take it down the day it opens. That's a work zone done right, and I'd be proud to have you on my crew.

Now go see the other room: Real Signs, Web Signs.