29The Ghost Sign That Isn't Dead
Hand-painted wall sign for Kirkpatrick & Witt Furniture & Appliances, 625 Franklin Ave, ordered by the store itself, a firm with roots to 1900 · sign painter not on record · the merged firm name puts the lettering no earlier than the 1960s merger · know who painted it? Tell us.SIGN
It looks like a faded memory. Then the store opens for business, same as the last hundred years.
Every city has ghost signs — those faded ads for businesses that died before your grandparents met. This is not one of them. The weathered yellow letters say KIRKPATRICK & WITT FURNITURE, and behind that wall, Kirkpatrick & Witt is open, selling couches, like it has for over a century. As local historians tell it, Sam Kirkpatrick opened Waco's first furniture store in 1900; G.C. Witt started the second in 1905; the 1953 tornado destroyed them both in one afternoon; both rebuilt, and the old rivals finally merged in the 1960s. The sign fades. The store doesn't.
One block over, tourists are photographing murals painted last year. Meanwhile this wall has been doing its actual job — being a sign — longer than any of us has been alive.