Carroll Shaddock Interview, Part 3 of 3

DT: When we left off, we were talking about the development of the Houston sign code. Maybe you can take it from there.

CS: Well, I think I was at talking about 85, when Governor Hobby said he wanted a compromise in Austin. So Mayor Whitmire, with the City Attorney, went up to negotiate with the industry.

Its always very frightening to us. There's a fellow named Bill Britton in Jacksonville who's a lawyer, who's a very fine lawyer and very active in Scenic America and very knowledgeable about these things and sometimes we'd laugh and we say we think were the only two people who who have had the necessity or opportunity, really, to become familiar with the law, which is very complicated having to do with science, who aren't employed by the billboard industry.

And so it was so frightening to see public officials go to Austin to negotiate with an industry about very technical things involving technical terms and not always being apparent what a certain thing means or what the effect of a certain thing is.

But any rate, we worked through all of that and something called House Bill 1335 resulted and that formed the basis upon which the code as it had been passed in 1980 in Houston was modified.

At first, we knew that there was one thing that we needed or wanted to get out of that negotiation and which was not on the table but we were able to get it into the negotiation and that is Texas cities have something called their extraterritorial jurisdiction areas.

That goes back to the fact that all over the country, cities as they grew, reached the boundaries of little surrounding cities or then areas not wishing to be a part of center cities, incorporated themselves into separate cities.

So you had the situation in Detroit where its completely ringed by white flight communities. All the money, all the resources are in these communities and what's left is a minority city in the middle, like the middle of a doughnut, that has all the problems and none of the resources and that has crippled areas.

I think ultimately when you read in the newspaper that around, it'd be about the tenth of April, you'll read about school districts in Michigan closing for the year because they're out of money.

Well, you know, there you can always see what it is. Its that kind of a situation, which also results in polarization of people.

Nobody in the city wants to have anything to do with the suburbs, nobody in the suburbs wants to have anything to do with the city and conservative people like me say that's means local problems don't get addressed which results in federal government action because somebody's going to do something about problems sooner or later.

So we got to have the resources where the problems are. Hence in Texas after the war, the passage of ETJs, areas around cities in which citizens may not incorporate so that as the city grows, it can incorporate the entire community and that when people flee from the cities, they're still in the tax base of the city.

They still vote in the city and were all one community. By the way, that is something which within the past year has now been permanently abandoned by the City of Houston under the leadership of our mayor, in that the Woodlands has now been given the right to incorporate and we wont see this ETJ as playing the rule, role in the future.

That's perhaps, in my opinion, the most significant political event of my life in municipal government or in what the future of Houston will be. That's another topic.

But what the City of Houston did get in 85 in this compromise was the authority to regulate signs in the ETJ. Its still the case in Texas that outside cities and the ETJ, no unit of government has the authority to regulate signs.

There are weak state laws administered through TXDOT that govern what happens in rural areas. But we've created a situation in Texas and I'll come back to this, where our whole regulatory authority is applicable in places where development is not taking place.

And where development does take place, there's no regulatory authority. Really makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Its its true whether you're planning subdivisions or having water wells.

We have these barrios in the valley where a lot of new, new people to this country are living in squalid conditions and they're not in incorporated cities or ETJs and therefore, nobody has any authority to, to, to, to, to enforce the most fundamental civic rules.

What happened in Houston when we stopped billboard construction in the city was the billboard construction in the areas just around the city, outside the city limits, mushroomed.

So we saw billboards were built in the Houston, in Houston in the seventies like there was no tomorrow and then in 80, it stopped and they built billboards like there was no, no tomorrow in the, in the areas just outside the city.

We got the authority for Houston to extend its ban on billboard construction into the ETJ. And it is within that whole ETJ now since 1985 that no billboards have been constructed, although there has been a tremendous political fight that if you, if, if, if you read the Houston newspaper, which has been really wonderful in the sense that, as Ill come to in a moment, Houston's built many billboards in Houston are supposed to be taken down by force of law in 2009 and 2013.

This is from an ordinance passed in 1992, which I'll describe in a moment. There's always going to be the end game. Do we have the political will to enforce that?

And I think Scenic Houston, our local organization, might, could be seen as having the not the strongest ties to the government in the last few years because there have been no issues or, or things to make that happen, but there's been a huge billboard fight, unlike anything I've even seen before,

in Houston over the last two months, which has one result of which has been to create tremendous positive resources, opinion and determination on the part of a growing number of Houston's to s-, Houstonians to see these sign laws through to the end.

So if they hadn't done it to us, we should've figured out another way to do it and it ultimately is a good thing. But it also ruined our Christmas and that is, our mayor proposed that billboards be allowed to be constructed again in Houston and it has been a battle royal and its still being negotiated.

But nonetheless, no billboards have been built in Houston since 1980 with this wonderful result. We have over hundreds of miles now of freeways in Houston that have no billboards and only have the monument signs that sit low to the ground.

So we've really become kind of a tale of two cities in Houston. We have everything that was developed before 1980, which is the worst in the world, and we have everything that's been developed since 1980, which in many ways is as good as anything in the world.

And that's the big story of the Houston sign code and, if I can stay on this topic of not building new billboards, that idea spread from Houston all over the country.

We're, we're, we're the model for this new way of looking at how to deal with signs and it, that is, to deal with the dynamic of change rather than trying to change the past.

Or stated differently, stopping billboard construction in the future instead of worrying about taking billboards down while were not noticing all the billboards that are being built behind our shoulder.

Over three hundred fifty cities in Texas now, Dallas being the last one, interestingly, have prohibited billboard construction and major cities all over the United States have done so, all in emulation of the Houston model.

Perhaps its a bit overstated, but not really. It really started with Lance Lalor and his action in 1980, was remarkable.

What happened then in 1985, there, recall I said the 1980 ordinance not only stopped billboard construction but also required the removal of about ten percent of the billboards in Houston, required all the billboards of whatever height to be reduced in height to forty-two feet.

That was to have been effective in 1986. The city and the outdoor industry made a compromise in 85 under the auspices of the legislature which were incorporated in this House Bill 1330 that I described.

I might've called it 1335 before, its 1330, which, slicing through all the detail, comes down to this point. The removals that were supposed to occur in 1986 were extended to be re-, to taken down in 93, 96 and 99.

So there was an extension of time for the removal of these billboards that were to be removed in 86. With respect to the signs all being lowered in height, only half of them would have to be lowered in height.

One third of those to be lowered in height in each of the years 1986, 1987 and 1988. And as I mentioned earlier, which was so important to us, the extension of the authority of the City of Houston sign code into the ETJ, which resulted in the cessation of billboard construction in the ETJ.

I might, I think I mentioned this before but let me say again, the first one was 288 to the South, then the, the county jumped in in the same year of 1985 under the leadership of County Judge John Lindsay and got authority for the County Commissioners Court of Harris County to prohibit billboard construction and set standards for on premise signs along any toll road in the city and, therefore, all of the, the West Park, the Beltway, all of these roads have been developed with no billboards and no signs over eight feet high.

And I want to make a little detour, if I may, back to trees and say that starting about five years ago, prominent members of the Houston community who are active in the Greater Houston Partnership, the Chamber of Commerce, became galvanized to do something about the ugliness of Houston freeways, which are the, a defining thing for Houston.

At, at, and dealing not just with billboards, but also with tree planting and, and vegetation and I want to mention some names. They're politically powerful people; I mean this is very important.

One in particular I would mention is a man named Dick Weekley. His brother, David Weekley, and he are the owners of the large homebuilding company with which you may be familiar.

And he's a man who has very passionately fought the trial lawyers in connection with medical malpractice and torts so that Texas has, has changed from being a state where a, a forum to which people tried to come if you wanted to bring large lawsuits for, for negligence or medical malpractice or anything to now a state that has model laws that make it very difficult to recover these princely sums in, in these examples.

And Dick Weekley has been the leader of that. And the other person, Hugh Rice Kelly, I mentioned has, is, is his chief lieutenant.

Dick Weekley is a very, very strong, nationally prominent Republican and very powerful person politically in the sin the State of Texas and his passion against billboards and for planting trees is unsurpassed by anybody.

And then there are other people, Max Watson, who is retired as a CEO of BMC Software, a big software company here that then merged into Hewlett-Packard, and others. I, I can't bring all the names up just in the interest of time.

But these people have become very politically active and through the Greater Houston Partnership, were now planning a hundred thirty five million dollars worth of trees on Houston freeways.

Ted Poe, who is this somewhat rambunctious former criminal judge here in Houston who would sentence people in unusual ways, got sent, went to Washington as congressman from North Harris County and got put on the Appropriations Committee.

He got a twenty, I think a twenty, fifteen or twenty million dollar earmark and so these nasty earmarks we hear so much about, whatever we think about them, Ill tell you, they're planting trees in Houston, Texas.

And the result is if you go on the right freeways David, y'all might go over to 288 and look at the median from here into downtown.

There are no billboards there and they, the forestation that's been done there is just magnificent. And the forestation on 610 going through Bellaire, for example, everywhere, these massive plantings of trees are taking place.

And by the way, we get to go to Austin and fight the billboard industry that, that, that seeks legislation as existing talk about political effectiveness.

In twenty-six states now, if there is a tree on public property that interferes with the visibility of a billboard, the government must cut the tree down.

So for example, that's the law in Atlanta and such a law is vigorously sought every session of the legislature in Texas.

And Margaret Lloyd and I get to go to Austin and fight it and successfully so far. That doesn't keep billboard companies in Houston, one in particular, from cutting trees off and down all around town.

And again, you can get on the freeways and just look and see where the trees have been cut off on public property to create visibility of billboards. Completely illegally.

But I wanted to talk about the, the forestation that's taking place. This is highly significant. I mean, I just want even to ask you if you might've noticed that, but if not, now that I've mentioned it, look around town at the, all this forestation that's taking place.

DT: Well, this might be a good jumping off point to talk about scenic issues in general because you've been active with reforestation and with trying to control signs, but it seems like there are other aspects of the visual environment that have been controversial over recent years

and that would include having scenic roadways, maintaining corridors that provide access to look at the state capitol, for instance or trying to regulate where cell towers can be put. Have you had any experience with those kind of concerns?

CS: Well, cell towers are interesting in that the federal government passed a law about four or five years ago. The only federal land use law that existed for many, many years was the prohibition against cities or states taking down billboards without paying cash compensation.

That was joined with the second one a few years ago which limit the ability of cities under their zoning laws to restrict the location of cell towers.

And cell towers has been an issue I, we haven't talked much about Scenic America, which is sort of the national expression of the, of the movement, Scenic Houston is the organization which came into existence and Billboards Limited kind of faded out of the picture and then we have an organization, Scenic Texas, which carries out the, the, the mission at the state level.

And then we have Scenic Austin, Scenic Dallas and other organizations and I have to mention in connection with Scenic Dallas that a highly significant amount of firepower for all of our efforts has resulted from a gentleman named Harlan Crow in Dallas.

Harlan is a, the leader of the family which you would know as the Trammell Crow Company, although that's not their precise business interest now.

A man who is very, very active nationally and locally and at the state level, one of the largest Republican Party contributors in the country and a man who has become very passionately concerned about all of these issues and that has made a huge difference in our, in our effectiveness in Texas, his his energetic interest in all of our topics.

Cell towers have been talked about but not anything that I've been that much involved in and we hear things about it, but we don't, it hasn't been a big issue.

Undergrounding power lines, this is a very, very thin line of people. It, it, for a small number of us, is an almost all consuming thing. I mean, the story of today is the story of my life.

I've got something I've got to do at the office and I'm trying to do this and, meanwhile, in the back of my mind, I'm concerned about undergrounding power lines, but it just can never quite make it up to the agenda.

But when Ralph started Billboards Limited, right off the bat, undergrounding power lines was a thing of interest.

In fact, the leading law, one of the leading law firms of our city, which represented HLandP, immediately put a memorandum out to all the lawyers in the firm for saying that they should not participate in the activities of this new organization, Billboards Limited, because the next thing that they would do would be that they would try and put the lines, power lines underground, which was opposed by HLandP.

Well, that, that, that, that, that memorandum, if it existed, I was, I heard about it, I never actually saw it, got one thing wrong and that was we weren't on our way to doing a next thing anytime soon because the th-, the billboard thing has consumed us for all this time.

But efforts have been made to do something about undergrounding utilities. And incidentally, both the City of Austin and the City of San Antonio that have municipally owned power companies are in programs of putting one percent of their lines underground every year and putting all their new lines underground.

So that's being accomplished in those cities but not in Houston. It remains a task for a person to do but the person has never stepped forward. What other things did you mention?

DT: Well, I had also mentioned Scenic Highways. I know there's been an effort to get (inaudible) from the state.

CS: Well, yes. At the federal level, a Scenic Highways programs was a-, actually, it was an accomplishment of Scenic America that a Scenic Highways program, or primarily Scenic America that a Scenic Highways program was implemented at the federal level.

One aspect of that is if you have a highway that's designated scenic, you cant build a new billboard on it and I, very quickly, forty-eight states adopted Scenic Highway programs.

Texas is not. The other state was Wyoming, but I understand that Wyoming has now done so, so were the one of the fifty states that does not have a Scenic Highways program.

Scenic Highways program would be a great thing. We've introduced legislation in favor of it but in terms of the broad scope of needs in this state, the principal of one, of which is that no unit of government has the authority to do anything about stopping sign construction outside of incorporated cities so that were seeing, I think I mentioned when I drove to Au-, Austin yesterday there were two new billboards in rural areas Fayette County.

They're building billboards all over the hill country. We have the cities and I can't, we don't there's not the energy or the time available for, for citizens to go to every city and have billboard construction stopped and it comes up in some cities, in others, it doesn't.

But by and large, we've got the cities prohibiting billboard construction. That's been successful. Three hundred fifty cities we know of.

But in the countryside, the one place where there should not be billboards being built in anybody's view in Texas we've tried to ban their construction. We've tried to get county authority to stop billboard construction if they wish to.

The billboard industry fights every proposal, no matter what, no matter how small, how unimportant. They have a clear policy and have my whole adult life of fighting everything with all the energy that they have.

In a negotiation, they're not a party with whom you can negotiate. Its a scorched earth policy and, and that's, that's how it is.

A story I have to come back is to is how is it that the City of Houston became the only city in America that has totally prohibited billboards and sought to take every billboard in this city down?

Hadn't done it, but the laws are on the book to do that. How did that happen? Its an unlikely place, I think.

And, and I think th-, the, the, that is a story which I'll complete and come back to in a moment, about how the billboard industry makes deals and then turns around and sues the city and doesn't, doesn't carry out their end of compromises and, and in the process, in addition to you having a City Council that over the years becomes more and more interested in the beauty of the city, you also have a City of, Council that over the years gets madder and madder and madder with the consequent things happening.

So we don't have a Scenic Roads program in Texas and we don't really even pursue that because, that seriously because Scenic Roads program is a great thing but its not very, its not very, in a statewide level, its not a very, very large thing.

And we end up finding that the billboard industry, I mean, they, they, they introduced it now because it gives a place to spend a lot of energy that's without any prospect of a successful outcoming be-, being that significant.

DT: And one last question about visual corridors, that some have been tried to be created or protected.

CS: Well, the only one I know about is in Austin. I, I would say as an outsider, auslander, if you will, I think its a shame that Austin hasn't done more in that connection.

I think the, the new high rise buildings in Austin are out of scale and, in many cases, architecturally aggressive and Austin will never be a Washington D.C.

Its a shame. But it's a pretty nice town. But certainly the corridors that do exist are good. Its nice to be able to go out on the, what's it called, the, the, the highway, the something of Texas, the,

DT: Capitol of Texas.

CS: Capitol of Texas Highway and be able to pull over to that little vantage point and look and see the capital. That's nice.

CS: Well, let me go back and complete the, the, the chronology of the Houston billboard ordinances and also mention on premise signs, which we haven't discussed.

In 85, the compromise was struck. The, the, the ink wasn't dry until this, till the, the industry sued the industry sued the City of Houston. And they basically, there were, they s-, thirty-five things they said were wrong.

There was a judge here who was notoriously hard on the City of Houston in litigation and they were able, they, to file one lawsuit in his court and then any lawsuit that they filed in any other court, he would consolidate it into his court.

He found for the billboard industry on thirty-five points and was reversed and rendered on all thirty-five points, which means that the higher court just said wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, thirty-five times and sent it back.

But nonetheless, that litigation went on, cost the city vast amounts of money, vast amounts of resources and back to the Pogo story, was poorly handled by the city legal department from the first minute till the last minute.

And again, that's a, that's a really frustrating thing when you're involved in this.

That notwithstanding the fact that there were constantly, not on my part, but always volunteer fine lawyers in Houston offering at no fee to handle these things for the City of Houston, which city attorney after city attorney would say oh, no.

Nobody's handling our business. To our current mayor's credit, he's got some fine, fine private lawyers who are not in the city legal department handling the litigation that's involved right now and that's a very, very good development.

The lawsuit, 93 came and the billboards weren't taken down. Remember these billboards were supposed to be taken down in 1986; it was compromised to extend them out to 93, 95, 99.

They weren't taken, nothing taken down in 93, nothing taken down in 95, nothing taken down in 99, nothing ever lowered in height. Here we are in 2008 and what can I say?

I probably spent forty hours Christmas week messing with this stuff, with things that happened here in Houston and not, not just I.

A whole lot of people. So its, its a, its an almost overwhelming thing to try to deal with. Almost but not quite.

The litigation dragged on and dragged on and dragged on and then finally the, the, a favorable ruling was obtained, appealed and all rights of appeal lapsed.

So the law that was passed in 1980, that was compromised in 1985. The city was sued by the industry, they dragged that out from 1985 to I think 2005 and finally, like you pull a piece of string, you get to the end of it, the city has won.

But its a complicated story. The city has been unable to implement its victory so the, the track record for taking billboards down in Houston matches the track record everywhere else, almost everywhere else.

It just never happens. But at least we haven't built new billboards. In 1992, a, the, the second billboard law was passed, remembering 1980 stopped billboard construction but left, just required that a few be removed.

When the City of Houston, faced with the largest billboard inventory in the world, said to the industry, we have authority to require all these billboards to be taken down that are not on federal highways.

But we're not going to do that; we're just going to take a few of them down. You would think the industry would say that's great. We keep this huge plan in place.

Instead, as indicated, they went to the legislature. They ended up compromising and then they sued on the compromise.

And its occurred to people with some, some suggestion on the City Council with suggestion from the outside, well, if, if they wont take ten percent of the billboards down now or they're going to fight us for all these years, were not going to fight over ten percent anymore.

And so in 1992, City Council of Houston passed an ordinance that said every billboard in the city has to be taken down, which they had the authority to do, in 2009 if made of wood and 2013 if made of steel.

The Federal Highway Beautification Act prohibits the implementation of that law for any sign visible from a federal highway, which means all the freeways.

The law is written in such a way that if the federal law every ch-, ever changes, there's immediate effect and removal required by the law. Will the federal law ever be changed?

There's a huge lobby up there to fight and its difficult to see any realistic possibility of that occurring anytime soon.

Would it never happen? You know, you've got to be optimistic about the long run but we have the law on the books. With respect to the signs that aren't on the federal highways, its a complicated story.

Were in a big chapter of it right now but that's going to be a very hot political issue in 2009 and in 2013.

All I can say is I'm just delighted that these unnecessary billboard wars that we've been having over the last two or three months in Houston have so inspired and galvanized so many people and, and never have I seen more energy available for the anti-billboard movement in Houston than I do now.

And I'm sixty-seven years old but I'm very much looking forward to the coming four or five years and I hope many beyond that as we try to play out the topic of taking down billboards in Houston.

But for sure, we haven't built any new ones. On premise signs, and of course, with our Scenic Texas organization, it has to be realized that everything we do in Houston, an attempt is made to undo it in Austin.

So we can't just fight this thing in Houston, we constantly have to fight it in Austin. But due to Harlan Crow, Dick Weekley, Max Watson and other people, we have blocking power in the Texas legislature.

And I don't believe that the billboard industry can pass a law in the city, in, in the state legislature and I think every session, were getting closer. I should mention one that people don't know about.

We used to go to the TXDOT engine-, engineers and say lets have some, some, some tree planting and some beautification on the, on the roadways.

Lets get architects to design bridges and do things in a nice way and they would say you know, we'd love to do that but that's not our legislative mandate.

If we did that, we wouldn't be able to build as many miles of road each year as we do and that's what our mandate is legislatively. So we drafted something called the Scenic Act of 2001.

Went to Austin and got it passed and it mandates that TXDOT consider aesthetic, architectural, historical, et cetera matters in the construction of all roadways in the State of Texas.

And David, you, you have to have noticed the way the new freeways built in the last five years in the state of Texas look. They're planting plants; they're using all kinds of materials.

They're paint, th-, they're really, and they're having workshops all around the state. Its called context sensitive design and it is mandated by the Scenic Act of 2001 which was written by and passed by the organization called Scenic Texas.

And that and only that is resulting in the freeways being done in say, Austin the way they are. And really, our organization, we should do a better job of making people aware of that.

Another thing we've done is through Garnet Coleman, a black Democrat legislator from Houston who's been very devoted to this cause of, of plants and, and, and so forth, that we have got appropriations equal to one-half to one percent of the total budget of, of TXDOT mandated to be spent by TXDOT on landscaping.

And so all this landscaping, see, I've heard people say boy, TXDOT is really, really doing better now, aren't they? Well, let me tell you, every bit of that, every plant you see is mandated to be planted by our legislative action and every, every, every frivolous dollar being spent on good architecture.

But in some areas like Gary Trietsch in Houston, we have wonderful district engineers who really are with the program.

On premise signs, I remember I was on a committee of the Chamber of Commerce to negotiate an on premise sign ordinance for Houston and in 78, I proposed at a meeting that there be a one hundred twenty-five foot height limit on on-premise signs in Houston.

Well of course, that was a facetious suggestion reflective of the fact that there was no height limit. But the representatives of the on-premise industry all opposed it because they said it was unconstitutional and communistic to put any limit on the height of a sign.

In the 1980 ordinance, Lance Lalor got passed, very modest on premise sign standards were put into place. In 1991, after two years of negotiating, which I did, this is Friday, every Friday at lunch with the on-premise industry, those standards were beefed up.

And so we have a near decent on-premise sign code in Houston. For the last four years, Dick Weekley, members of the Greater Houston Partnership and the Houston Business Community have been talking that they want to see all of this tightened up a lot more and I think something will come of that.

So that's kind of the on premise sign picture. And then, and the thing that though that I've, I, I, like to report the best because it was ju-, somewhat, I just, I sort of, it just sort of happened, I would put it that way.

In the 1991 ordinance, we put a provision in that said you could have no sign downtown over forty-two feet off the ground.

And the result is that we have this downtown skyline that doesn't have any kind of a sign on it, except of course, on the city's Hilton Hotel.

But we got the law changed on that so that that can't happen again. I read that German filmmakers like to make their movies about America in Houston and the TV series over there in an article, and it didn't talk directly about signs, but these German filmmakers were saying the Houston skyline is clean.

Its different from other American cities and I think its that we don't have signs on top of any of our buildings downtown.

Meanwhile, in the Medical Center now, they're having a contest to see how many signs they can put up on top of the hospitals.

But in downtown Houston, on-premise signs are protected. There are a lot of other places we could go. Maybe that's all on signs.

DT: You've talked about some of the mandates and ordinances, regulations that you've tried to press for sign control. Maybe we can talk about you personally.

You do a lot of these things without any individual mandate; nobody's making you do this. Why is it that you care about these things and why should a future generation find these things to be important and carry it onward?

CS: I don't understand that myself. Perhaps I shouldn't say this but I will. There's a George Bernard Shaw quotation that, let, lets put it this way. There are a lot of people like me.

I mean, not like thousands or hundreds, but there are, and you know, were not heroes. We're just doing something that were driven to do. I, I, I can't explain it myself.

I can tell you night before last, I did not sleep after having a meeting in which I basically got told forget it as far as doing anything about retarding LED in Texas.

And I asked myself that question all night, am I going to keep doing this? Kind of a dumb question to ask after all of these years.

Why do I do this? I don't know why I do it but I seem to have to do it. And then it seems like every time I go through one of these periods of asking myself that question, I, I end up deciding well, yes, I, I'm not going to, I'm not going to quit now.

I will say this. We've, one thing that's interesting is how many people in this movement are soldiers who ser-, people who did military service in Germany.

I did not, but that is fading now that the Cold War is over and we don't have our troops over there. But people being in Europe and seeing an environment that's so different, you know, I mean, in, in, in, in Germany and to a certain extent in other countries in Europe, there are no billboards.

There are no signs although they're now being imported. Its just starting now and that's very disheartening.

You can see McDonalds signs fifty feet up in the air in the north of Sweden, for crying out loud. So our, our, the, this aspect of our culture is making more inroads there.

But nonetheless, one thing that I always have done every year is to take a vacation in Europe and I can relax there because there not all this stuff happening.

And the other thing is we go to Colorado, to an area where there are no signs at all and you can relax there.

But, and I guess now in Houston, I can relax in Houston because at least all the signs that are here are by now old, shall we say, friends.

They've been around a while and there's not anything that upsets, although driving to Austin. I don't know.

I think the the comment that I was going to repeat though, which people like me and there are a lot of us, not a huge number, but a lot of us, joke about and what people have throw this at us is called the, and I don't think that human progress depends on me, I, and I don't want to be ever sounding immodest or hubristic about anything.

That's not the way I feel or think. But there is this thing that is kind of interesting.

He said the reasonable man makes a, a, I wish I had the quotation, a fair accommodation with life as he finds it and is well liked by his peers and enjoys and has an enjoyable, pleasurable life and goes on in this vein.

And then says on the other hand, there's the unreasonable man. Said the unreasonable man can't accept anything the way he finds it.

He's an irritant to everybody and goes on and paints a not totally, but largely unflattering picture of what he calls the unreasonable man, which all of us who are really into doing this stuff, especially on the sign issue, feel like were at least being described to some degree.

And then it says therefore, all human progress depends on the unreasonable man. I don't think that all human progress res-, and I think that's a, a, a, a, a grossly inflated statement.

But at least in this little area of the scenic world, it does seem like there are just a very limited number of people who are consumed with some kind of a passion.

I might've said earlier that its interesting how the most secular people or did I say that privately?

The most, the most, the most secular people that I know ultimately start talking about values that have some spiritual basis, if not explicitly religious basis, and start seeing or feeling that there's something at work that deserves more respect than just what we individually or collectively do and that there is a sense of stewardship.

I heard this expressed in the poems of Heinrich Heine, who is a nineteenth century romantic German poet who wrote poems about trees and I was on a nature hike in the, in Austria in the Alps, my wife and I, where we would sit down and meditate under trees and these poems of Heine would be read.

And it all made a certain kind of sense and seemed to describe things that innervated the people I know and people who I've watched do this.

How can it be that eighty or eighty-five percent of the people want a beautiful environment, don't want billboards and and the list of things go on, and yet in a political it, things that are controlled politically, that, that indeed all human progress doesn't depend on those of us who are doing this.

We can't even give a proper expression to this one small voice on this one small topic. So in that way, I don't feel successful in, in what I've tried to do and the best story I can tell myself is on the billboard point especially is we kept it alive.

I mean, that, that is maybe the, the most that we've done. The, the, the ocean, we have property down on the Gulf of Mexico, with the erosion and global warming and the rising ocean, every year, more of the beach is taken away.

People come in and they build big concrete bulwarks and they do everything in the world to try to preserve their property and their houses and it all fails in the end.

In the end, the ocean and whatever force is behind the ocean is bigger than they are and it overwhelms them.

My own view of my lifetime is that I've lived in a vulgarizing society where things have become increasingly crass and unpleasant, commercial.

Not unlike the Gulf of Mexico rising higher and higher onto my beach property and that any intelligent person should be able to look at that and see that and know you can't fight that.

And ultimately your efforts are just swept over like the Gulf of Mexico.

Its frustrating and sometimes maybe the only thing you can say is that your kids or your grandkids, back to common theme of everybody who works on these things, I don't know that were going to have done anything for our children or our grandchildren, but maybe we will have kept ali-, we have if, if we, we stand up and say I object and we've kept that I object alive and through our years.

And we may not see the, the, the end fruition of that but we have to hope that there is one.

DT: Well said. Anything you'd like to add?

CS: No.

DT: No. Well, thank you very much. Really appreciate your time.