The Ball’s Now in our Court

It’s been a tough year for the museum financially, so we haven’t been shopping at the various sign- and advertising-targeted antique shows and swap meets we’ve traditionally attended. But, thanks to our network of ever-enthusiastic supporters and friends, we’ve made some major acquisitions this year, and, as usual, they were often a group effort. One involved the donation of an iconic “Norge ball.”
Our on-the-road super sign sleuth, Debra Jane Seltzer, first told us about the Norge ball, which she discovered on a soon-to-be-remodeled building in Sanford, ME. Debra Jane, who any vintage-sign aficionado and Flickr enthusiast knows, has an incredible passion for vintage signs and scours the U.S., looking for such treasures and documenting them on her RoadsideArchitecture.com site. She also spends much time and effort researching the signs, and their possible availability, as she did with this particular sign.
She alerted the museum late last summer about the sign, and then she found the developer, Tom Churchill, and contacted him on the museum’s behalf. She also photographed the sign and shared her knowledge of the Norge balls, as they affectionately came to be known, with us.
According to Debra Jane, the striped version discovered in Maine is much rarer than the more familiar, polka-dotted version. Norge balls first appeared on the landscape in the early 1960s, predominately on single poles, but sometimes mounted on the roofs over the laundromats they identified. She says, of the approximately 50 known to still exist around the country, the only one still rotating, as originally intended, is in Iron Mountain, MI. Many have been retro-painted to identify later tenants of their respective stores.
Having completed the initial groundwork, Debra Jane turned it over to me, and I followed up with Tom to confirm the sign’s availability. He was more than happy to donate the sign and said to just come get it as soon as possible. The next step was to find a sign company to take it down.
I looked in ST’s trusted Sign Erection and Maintenance Directory for a sign company in Sanford, ME, but the town was too small to be listed. A Google search for local sign companies with crane capabilities was also a dead end, so I turned to a familiar museum friend, Michael Leary of Sundance Sign and Design (Dover, NH), whom I contacted to see if he knew of a sign company with a crane in the area. Michael said he’d be glad to help, and, once the sign was down, he’d store it for us until we could make the trip to New Hampshire to pick it up.
Michael contacted Scott Stanton of Dasco Signs (Acton, ME), about donating his services to take the sign down. Scott was glad to help, so Michael and Scott contacted Tom to arrange a time to remove the sign once the weather improved. That happened earlier this year, and Michael was on-hand with his van and a trailer so that Scott could set the sign down. The sign then made its way back to Sundance Sign.
In March, Michael built a pedestal to set the still-attached rotator and sign. He plans to build a crate around the sign to transport the sign back to Cincinnati, sometime in the future.
A true team effort from beginning to end! Our sincere thanks go out to Debra Jane, Scott and Mike.