At any reputable Driving School, they teach you to always keep your eyes on the road. The highway is the eye way, they say. It’s a mantra of sorts. You find it on bumper stickers and t-shirts, even though by reading those you can’t possibly be also focusing on the pavement. What are you really supposed to do? This is the question I frequently ask professors of driving education. What if a car up ahead has an obscene accessory hanging from its undercarriage that will provide you great cocktail conversation for years to come? What about those delightful vanity plates that produce several guttural guffaws? Like a Californian cruiser with one that reads, “CarMAN San Diego.” You’re not looking at the road if you see this. What’s the cure for white line fever? Staring into the bubbling asphalt, praying for a sign? My next guest made a fortune on the presumption that people do anything but keep their eyes on the road. He’s spent a lifetime installing billboards across the vast interstate system, banking on the wandering corneas of drivers. I caught up with Guillermo Tablero earlier this morning. This is a transcript from our video call, helping explain all the visual references.
MTP: Looking good, pal.
GT: Do I know you?
MTP: You sure see me.
GT: What exactly are you wearing?
MTP: Two robes. One’s wool, the other’s flannel. The pilot light went out last night, so I had to layer up.
GT: And what was it you wanted to talk about?
MTP: How you fell into the billboard business.
GT: Technically speaking, I climbed into the biz.
MTP: Sorry, what? I think we have a bad connection. Let me call you back.
7 minutes later.
MTP: You there?
GT: Still here.
MTP: Where were we?
GT: I was telling you how I got into the billboard business.
MTP: Right. Please go on.
GT: It was a typical hot morning in West Texas. I had gone to the grocery store to buy several dozen eggs, planning on a whole afternoon of yolking cars. Approaching my favorite intersection I noticed the familiar blue lights of the police. Annoyed and now perplexed at what I was going to do with rest of my day, a stranger passing by told me he knew of a much better vantage point for pelting vehicles. He said he’d take me there.
MTP: What was his name?
GT: What?
MTP: The stranger. I’d like to know his name.
GT: Gus, I think. It's not important.
MTP: This Gus have a last name or what?
GT: Not that I knew of.
MTP: Is there a perfect amount of highway distraction?
GT: I think so. You want to get someone’s attention without causing a wreck. But you also don’t want to cause traffic to halt. It’s all about striking the right balance. There was this one time in the late 70s when the Friends of Espãna wanted me to project a sixteen-part documentary on the Spanish Civil War on loop high above I-40. The sound wasn’t great, plus most of it was in subtitles. You’d get pileups and arguments over Hemingway. After a week, they decided to replace it with a simpler, perfunctory “F--- FRANCO” sign. That did the trick. And the fine we received was more than worth it.
MTP: What did Franco think? And where was Gus in all this?
GT: I’m pretty sure Franco was dead by then and Gus was a street person. I never saw either again.
MTP: But I hope you thanked them both in your acceptance speech...moving on. What is it about billboards and why do they matter?
GT: There’s an honesty in them. Are they always the most clever things? No. But neither are we. Some of my favorites like “DUI?” or “Good Food at Exit 17” get right to the point, ya know? They don’t try to do too much. I’m a big believer in understanding the society around you. Take Herman Melville. Would Moby-Dick have been as successful in a society that consumes a lot of sushi? I doubt it.
MTP: You eat whale?
GT: You’re missing my point entirely.
MTP: Thank you.
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