Rolling Stone Shoutout! (Alternately titled: The Bill Harper Story)

So I was flipping through the latest edition of Rolling Stone today, when I saw something completely unexpected...a story focused on New Bern! Of course, the story is about how large hog farms are ruining the environment, corrupting local politics, and forcing family farms out of business, so it's not exactly a flattering article. It also refers to New Bern as "tiny," and mentions its proximity to "the densest concentration of hogs in the world." But hey, was there an article about the town you grew up in this month? I thought not!

There's also a photo of the locally-infamous "Mexican Imports" sign. For those who don't know - and there is absolutely no reason why you should - Mexican Imports is a sort of antique/junk/rare goods shop just outside of New Bern, about a mile from the house I lived in during middle school. The owner, a man named Bill Harper, is a bit of a....well, let's just say an "eccentric" fellow. In the '90s he decided to construct a large wooden billboard on the property of the store, just so he could spell out whatever happened to be his latest grievance with the government.

Not surprisingly, many local politicians weren't too happy about being called idiots on a large sign in big block letters on the side of a major highway. So then the lawsuits started. Not wanting to come across as anti-free speech, they took the zoning-violation approach in trying to bring the sign down. Harper's response? Build a make-shift shack ON TOP OF the 20+ ft-high sign, and LIVE THERE until the politicos backed off (the bottom of the shack is visible in the RS photo; sorry, can't find a link for an online version).

Eventually, though, he came down unharmed, and years later ran his own campaign for county commissioner (he even managed to get himself elected at one point). The sign remains today, informing the citizens of any little government misdeed.

Anyway, the Rolling Stone is the one out now with Snoop Dogg on the cover.
The infamous sign can be found here.
I honestly don't know what Bill Harper's up to these days.