Wednesday, August 23, 2006

So... what are stick families?

About a year ago, I started noticing stick families being displayed in full glory on the backs of vehicles here in my home town of El Paso, Texas. Most of them were emblazoned on the backs of minivans and SUVs (probably because it's the most visible way to show off one's stick family).

At first, I thought these stick families were kind of ridiculous... sort of a "two decades after" version of the "Baby on Board" signs and their many offspring that cropped up all over the place from 1985-87. I remember being a senior in high school, hand drawing one of those skewed yellow squares with the brilliant statement: "Corona in car" (yes, the yellow square rage was the same time as the very first Corona Beer rage, and yes, there's nothing most genius that a teenager can do to attract attention from a school's narcs than post something that says you have booze in your vehicle. What the hell was I thinking?!!?!).

Well, not to deviate too much from this blog's original "intent"... I now find these stick families as charming kitsch. Maybe it's because I have a family of my own (albeit, we're not in stick form on the back of my car), maybe because it's kind of a cultural statement (look at my family; we're all here, and we're proud). Whatever it is, stick families are stuck all over tailgates and windows throughout El Paso.

Now, I'd love to add your stick family photo contribution, so please feel free to mail it to me, and I'll be glad to post it. I will eliminate the license plate number. Also, if you ARE a stick family, please let me know! You get extra credit for sending me a photo of your flesh-and-blood family right next to your vehicle's stick family! Double bonus points if you're in the same order as your stick family! All the stick families I will post are from here in El Paso, Texas. Please let me know where your photograph was taken.

And.......enjoy......!

2 comments:

cal8007 said...

Hey Mondo!

You made news in one of our yahoo groups LOL. I am a member of a group who specializes in making shapes with the Cricut die cut machine using SureCutsAlot software. One of the things we can make is Stick people - yep!

I have lots of stick people ready to be cut on vinyl if you're interested - I did read you have a family too.

BTW, I live in El Paso too.

Regards,

Carmen
cal8007@aol.com

Chuck Fensch said...

Hi Carmen!

I'd love to hear about what was said about it! I've been really lazy about this blog and I need to get better at it. If you'd like to contribute, or give a link to where people can get their stick families from you, drop me a line!!!