There’s a famous sign on top of a hangar at ATL (Atlanta Hartsfield Int’l Airport) which reads simply “Fly Delta Jets”. I’m pretty sure no one thinks about it much, but if they did they might ask, “What the hell does that mean? Does any airline NOT fly jets?”

Back in the 1960’s when most of Delta’s competitors had not yet adopted jet aircraft, Delta sought a competitive advantage by making the point, atop this hangar, that Delta had lots of jets and you should fly them. We did. It worked. But that was 60 years ago. Putting that into perspective, 60 years before they put up that sign airplanes had not yet been invented, much less jet aircraft.

Yet 60 years after Delta jets came and conquered, the old sign remains. Perhaps to remind us that fighting the last advertising war dies slowly, if at all.

This is an illustration of something we see a lot. Companies and even us plane folk (pun intended) tend to keep doing stuff long after its utility has passed, just because…it’s what we have always done. Tell your customers to fly jets. Delta does, so what could be wrong with that?

Recently, on a Caribbean island which will not be named, my family reunioned at a resort which had several restaurants, two of which required men to wear collared shirts.

Mind you, every day it felt like 100 degrees in the shade, and the informality of the lovely beaches was the raison d’etre of the place. But some years ago, the management got it in their mind that in order to make a place look and feel classy, patrons must be required to wear a collared shirt.

My son, who is an excellent dresser, showed up with a collared shirt. However, it turned out to be the wrong collar, what used to be called a “Nehru” — consisting of a half inch single fabric collar around the top of the shirt. It looked cool.

Nevertheless, the maître d' judged it was not a real collar. This was the rule, from sixty years ago. The Manager was called in to mediate. With remarkable irony, but a total lack of his appreciation for it, the manager showed up also wearing a Nehru-collared shirt. The levity of such ridiculousness was soon ruined by his continued insistence that my son could not dine at this near empty restaurant without going back to his room and changing his shirt. Sixty years ago, the actual dude, Nehru, governed India and was globally admired, all while wearing the same very cool and chic shirt. To no avail in this present-day Caribbean paradise resort. Fly Delta Jets. Don’t wear Nehru collared shirts. We sometimes do things, “just because’, maybe even “despite”.

Which got me to asking myself, what is my own equivalent sign or rule? What am I still doing that I started doing 60 years ago, back when it was a good idea?

Somewhere, in the depths of my righteousness, is the equivalent of a “Fly Delta Jets” sign. Or an “Only collared shirts” rule. It’s as if we have fallen down the wishing well.

Take the city I live in, Austin, for instance. 40 years ago, musicians and artists flocked here because it was a cheap place to live and there were lots of gigs paying almost nothing, but heck, who needed money. Nowadays, even folks making $100k/year can’t afford to live here. And most musicians around here don’t make $100k/year. Not nearly as many gigs, cover charges way up. If you’re lucky there is a DJ playing records. Yet we still call ourselves the Live Music Capital of the world! Fly Delta Jets.

I still think about learning to play squash everytime I pass the squash court at the gym. Only nobody plays squash anymore. Yet my gym still maintains 5 squash courts, just in case. Fly Delta Jets.

On an actual Delta jet, they still explain to you how to fasten a seat belt, implore you not to smoke cigarettes, and direct you to the location of the life vest "in case of a water landing", even though your flight path will never cross any actual body of water. Fly Delta Jets.

We tend to assume that "all things change" and that things are always changing. In geological time, this is true. But in human time, inertia rules. Most things, people, ways of looking at the world, assumptions — tend to just sit there, like giant signs on tops of buildings, proclaiming solutions to forgotten questions.

What if we could change our sign on a fairly regular basis to something that might prompt us, make us think, amuse and delight us, perhaps even cause us to reconsider whatever we might be considering at the moment?

What would that signage look like?

There's a taco joint on 5th St. in Austin which started posting signs on a makeshift board several years ago. I don’t know who comes up with the El Arroyo stuff, but it’s a helluva lot better than Fly Delta Jets. Here's a sample:

You can find more, and even check out the menu and look at pictures of delicious margaritas (who doesn’t want to waste their valuable online time doing that?) at www.elarroyo.com

There is a lens we have all honed. The one we settled on, and somehow came to believe. Over time, we start to think it’s the lens of truth.

Fly Delta Jets.

It was something to think about in 1963. Today, not so much. The signs of our times should change, just as times change, because the sign you see today may not be the true sign of the times.

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