Stolen Road Signs - 420 Street

Below is a copy of an article from today's Star Trib. Hmm....stolen road signs.....reminds me of some people I know ...ahem ahem.

Cannabis connotation makes some rural road signs vanish
Chuck Haga, Star Tribune
June 7, 2005 POT0607

Far out from Minneapolis, along country lanes in southern Minnesota, there are signs of a drug problem.
Well, the thing is, the signs are gone. That's the problem. And it's because of weed.
Not weeds. Weed. Or maybe you call it grass, or pot, or Mary Jane, or reefer.
Or 420.
In several southern Minnesota counties where rural street grids use big numbers, remote road signs marking 420th Avenue or 420th Street have gone missing. Same with 420th Lane. County crews replace them -- at $80 or more a shot -- and the new signs disappear.
"They put them up on Friday and by Monday they're gone," said Brad Milbrath, chief deputy for the Waseca County Sheriff's Office. "It costs quite a bit of money and a lot of time."
The number 420 has been slang for marijuana at least since the 1970s, but even regular pot smokers offer only hazy explanations for its origins.
The number is not police code for a marijuana arrest, a sociologist who researched it told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2001, as the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws began its annual conference on April 20.
It isn't the number of chemical compounds in marijuana, or a Grateful Dead address in San Francisco, or the time of day when guitarist Jerry Garcia died. It doesn't represent a passage from the Bible "or tea time in Amsterdam, where pot is legal," the Inquirer reported.
Whatever, Waseca County said, and renamed 420th to 42Xth. The new signs have stayed put for a week, Milbrath said, and yes, he's holding his breath.
Other counties using similar street grids -- and facing similar losses -- also are weighing responses.
Despite the many losses, "we haven't recovered any," an exasperated Milbrath said. "That surprises us. We just haven't found the right places where people have taken them and put them on their walls."