STONER'S CAMPAIGN SIGNS ARE A STEAL

"Hey, Beavis. Look at that yard sign. It says Stoner."

"Heh heh, yeah, Stoner. You big stoner, Butt-head. Heh heh."

"Let's, like, steal it."

And so, with a conversation that probably went very much like this, another
one of Pat Stoner's campaign signs was snatched from a front lawn in South
Milwaukee.

It won't help him at the polls, but Pat's message has penetrated the smoky
haze and captured the imagination of the stoner demographic.

To them he offers the promise not of a chicken in every pot, but of a pot
sign for anyone who isn't chicken to grab one.

"It seems the younger generation has decided that being a stoner is cool,"
said Pat, who was born a Stoner and will die a Stoner. He is running for
re-election as alderman.

"It's irritating," he said. "They're $4.87 apiece with the wires."

Stoner estimates that 40 of his 150 red, white and blue campaign signs have
disappeared since last month. His Stoners were goners in the 1997 election,
too, the last time he put up signs.

At first he thought maybe his opponents in the earlier election were
copping his signs. But his stepdaughter, then a student at South Milwaukee
High School, solved the mystery.

"She came home one day and said, 'I think I know what's been happening to
your signs.' She saw them in kids' lockers at school," Stoner said.

A generation ago, heavy marijuana smokers were called potheads or just
heads. Pat Stoner, 58, said he doesn't remember anyone connecting his
surname to the drug culture until the 1990s.

These days, stoner is the preferred name.

Stoner was in Tennessee for a NASCAR race over the weekend, and four
college guys in the parking lot spotted one of his campaign signs in the
back of his pickup truck. They asked him for it. He knew why but said yes
anyway.

"Somewhere in a dorm room at the University of West Virginia one of my
campaign signs is hanging," he said. One of the guys said he planned to
cover the word Pat on the sign with a piece of tape and write in his own
first name.

This whole trend is right up there with smiling stoners posing in front of
the Bong State Recreation Area signs down in Kenosha County. (Don't bring
this up to the folks running the park. I found out Thursday they don't
think it's a bit humorous.)

Another time, two guys delivering a refrigerator to the alderman's home
noticed he had one of those carved wood signs you can buy at State Fair.
"The Stoners," it said.

"Oh, man, are you Stoners?" one mover said. Two weeks later, someone
unscrewed the sign and carried it away. There's a new one hanging there now
- - more securely.

Stoner graduated from Bay View High School, and so did his kids and some
other relatives. He was saying the other day that a lot of Stoners went
through the school. "And there still are," his son piped up.

I talked to two teenagers at the McDonald's on Chicago Ave. in South
Milwaukee, and they said they weren't surprised at all that stoners would
take Stoner signs.

"I wouldn't risk having it in my house where my mom would see it," said
Rachel Nelson, who was hanging out with Sarah Weyrum.

Driving around, I noticed the campaign signs of another aldermanic
candidate - Jim Logic. When I called later, he told me I had guessed
correctly that the kids are not stealing his signs.

Announcing to your friends that logic is your thing just doesn't cut it.
Heh heh, know what I mean?