Ethel strikes back
Grandma was a teacher and she drove the 18 miles from Powers to Myrtle Point every school day. It’s a pretty drive on a narrow road that hugs the hillside high above the snaking south fork of the Coquille River, past high pastures and a few scattered houses. One day there went Ethel on her morning commute when she noticed “Howard Post” boldly painted on a large rock embedded in the hillside. She kept going and there was another one. Then another one. For a stretch of several miles young master Howard took it into his adolescent brain to spray paint his name on many, many exposed boulders in the hillside. My grandmother’s solution to this embarrassment was to buy her own can of spray paint and on the way home that day, wearing a dress, (she wore only dresses then,) she stopped the car and over-painted every “Howard Post” she could reach. It took many years for that paint to fade.