Panhandle Magazine: Spring 2021

By Nick Gerlich

IN 2013, DEMI LOVATO SANG, “BABY WHEN THEY LOOK UP AT THE SKY, WE’LL BE SHOOTING STARS JUST PASSING BY. YOU’LL BE COMING HOME WITH ME TONIGHT; WE’LL BE BURNING UP LIKE NEON LIGHTS.”

What Lovato captured in song is something that US businesses started embracing in the 1920s: neon advertising. After an inauspicious display at the 1910 Paris Auto Show by Georges Claude, his luminous gas-discharge tubes pulsing with rarefied gases such as neon slowly caught on as a form of outdoor advertising. The first neon signs in the US were both created for Los Angeles Packard automobile dealerships in 1923.

And the race was on to electrify American streets with messages to come hither and spend money.

For the next 40 years, our urban streets were covered in splashes of color from this electrified gas that some likened unto fire. Photos of Amarillo’s Polk Street from the mid-1940s show that practically every store had a neon sign hanging from its façade. A decade later along Route 66 on Amarillo Boulevard, every motel and restaurant installed a sign they hoped would attract more customers by being a little louder and more visible than others down the road.

By the 1970s, however, industry trends and civic opinions changed. Neon became expensive, especially compared to much cheaper backlit plastic signs. Furthermore, city councils became convinced that neon signs signaled motorists they were entering a seedy low-rent district. Neon slipped into disfavor as ordinances were passed and businesses replaced neon with less expensive alternatives.

Today, few working neon signs remain, although nationwide there are thousands of inoperable and rusting hulks from a bygone era left standing along the roadside. It is into this scenario that Nick Gerlich, Hickman Professor of Marketing at West Texas A&M University, finds himself, camera in hand.

“I am a documentarian first and foremost,” Gerlich said, “and an artist second. I want to record as many of these vestiges of the past as I possibly can. If I can make it look pretty in a photo, then all the better.”

Gerlich estimates there are at least 12,000 neon signs remaining, although only a small portion of those are actually in use. He has traveled throughout the lower 48 states in an effort to photograph as many of these as possible.

“I have enjoyed seeing the variety of neon signs that were used, including the use of arrows to point motorists toward a desired location,” Gerlich added. “Those arrows started out small, then grew larger and larger, sometimes in large swooping patterns with electric chaser bulbs to add motion, all designed to attract customers.”

It was, as he said, “The Golden Age of outdoor advertising.” His passion is a perfect match for his vocation as a marketing professor. In his estimation, those neon tubes spoke louder than words. With no more than ten seconds to grab the attention of a passing motorist, neon signs had to appeal to cents and sensibilities. When he comes upon a relic in the wild, he says he hears voices from the past—marketing voices—beckoning customers.

Gerlich has documented his efforts of the last 10 years on his Instagram account (@nickgerlich), as well as on a pair of custom Google Maps (eastern and western US) he designed, with pins showing the signs he has photographed and the known ones he has yet to visit. “I plan my travels around the blue pins on my map, the ones I have not seen. I want to photograph those the most. It’s kind of like a ‘Pokemon Go’ game for me.”

Although he realizes he will probably never photograph them all, given time, distance and financial concerns, not to mention the fact that signs come down and are either sent to the scrapper or sold to private collectors, he aims to do a high quality job. At the same time, he recognizes that this is a group effort of sign aficionados around the country, people who align themselves with hashtags such as #signgeeks and #signmonger.

“It’s truly a group effort, because the challenge is larger than any one single photographer could ever hope to accomplish,” Gerlich stated. “Collectively, we have a chance of capturing the vanishing vernacular before it is gone.”

Gerlich recently staged a five-week “Miles and Miles of Texas” series on his Instagram account, a virtual tour

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of the best locations and signs in the state. Each day he wrote a 300-word historical narrative of the city, its signs and its attractions. He plans to do a Spring Break virtual tour of Florida next. “These posts allow me to showcase my favorite places, as well as hone my writing skills each day,” Gerlich commented.

Locally, Gerlich has documented every known sign in Amarillo, ranging from the Cowboy Motel, Cattlemen’s Club, Triangle Motel and Woods Inn on the Boulevard; Dennis the Menace Liquors on 6th; the Astro motel just west of Soncy on the Boulevard and more. Through the years, he has witnessed some of those signs stripped of their neon and channel lettering, only to be replaced by cheaper plastic alternatives. He mourns those losses like many would the loss of a pet because they signal the silencing of a voice, a voice that echoes in a different format for the modern era.

As one might expect, Gerlich is working on book projects that feature his photos and storytelling. His Texas and Florida efforts are among the first of those, as well as one focusing on neon in the great American deserts. “There is little that makes my heart skip a beat than seeing a neon sign shining brightly across miles and miles of barren desert,” he said wistfully. The recently restored sign at Roy’s Cafe in Amboy, California, along Route 66 in the middle of the Mojave, is topmost in his mind.

“If I can make just a small contribution to the memory of this bygone era, my time will have been well-spent,” concludes Gerlich. “The things we take for granted are the things we one day realize we should have been preserving. My job is to preserve them at least in pictures.”