TRURO - Thelma Strong looks at the hole in the ground beside her flowerpot and wonders why.
"I'd like to get the sign back," she says, of the Mother's Day gift from her son. "Somebody just lifted it out of the ground."
She is upset on one hand because of her personal attachment to the professionally manufactured sign, which read: 'No turning in the driveway.'
But she is also concerned its absence will renew other headaches she thought had been cured after the sign was erected on her lawn.
Strong lives beside the railroad tracks on Queen Street and her driveway often becomes a convenient turning spot for motorists too impatient to wait for slow-moving trains to pass.
"I mean, when you get a four-engine train with about 100 cars blocking the street, they get a little pissed off," she says. "They get tired of waiting and then they turn in the yard."
Some time ago, Strong and her daughter erected a small fence on her front lawn after disrespectful motorists ran over her flowers. Her truck has also been dented by an impatient, hastily turning motorist, while others have emptied their ashtrays or worse in her yard.
"Well, it's just a pain really ... I've had men urinate in my lilac bushes," she says. "It got to be unsafe in the flower garden ... If I don't get another sign up they are going to start turning again."
Strong says the sign is distinctive enough that she will easily recognize it should it appear elsewhere. Ultimately, however, she is hoping whoever took the sign will find a conscience and simply bring it back.
"I want that sign," she says. "Please return it."
And she also wishes that local motorists who regularly use Queen Street when the freights are present would use another route if they are too impatient to wait for the train to move on.
"I don't understand why they can't go down Prince (Street)," she said.
