ODDS & ENDS.

Where have all the bumper stickers gone?

The heyday of bumper stickers, the late 1960s and early '70s, proclaimed every imaginable position, attitude, political agenda, and thought--thinkable or unthinkable. Occasionally I see a relic from this time period, often a VW bus--paint peeling and metal rusting--making its way down the road. It looks as though its bumper stickers help hold the vehicle together. "End the War," "Celebrate Earth Day" (April 22 lest you forgot), "Question Authority," and other such memorable missives might actually outlast these aging cars.

Today these proverbs on wheels are an endangered species. Why? Maybe the proliferation of vanity license plates celebrating the individual have replaced the social messages of yesteryear's stickers. Or maybe people who have invested megabucks in their important status icons--a BMW or Lexus--don't want to defile their fancy runabouts with things so pedestrian.

Every so often I do see a new bumper sticker worth remembering. Since I am one of the last people in the Western world not to use a cell phone while driving, I tend to look for significant stickers instead of making a bunch of inconsequential calls.

One bumper sticker I noticed recently read, "My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter." Clever perhaps, but not absolutely accurate. No dispute about the adjective Jewish. Jesus was a Jew, even if some Christians either deny or don't really want to think about this fact. Now Jesus is traditionally depicted as a carpenter's son, but some recent theories based on archeological findings in the city of Sephorris, about an hour's walk north of Nazareth, indicate another possibility. Jesus could well have been more than a carpenter: a construction worker or, better yet, a skilled artisan who worked on some of the major Greco-Roman buildings there. If this is so, Jesus probably also learned to speak and understand Greek there.

The other bumper sticker that caught my eye recently read "Blessed are the quilt makers for they are piece makers." The Beatitudes, those hallmarks of Christianity, have frequently been updated or twisted. Simon and Garfunkel sang their own version in the song "Blessed," which was included in their Sounds of Silence album. And in the movie Life of Brian a member of the crowd gathered to hear Jesus does not hear him correctly. He thinks Jesus has just said, "Blessed are the cheese makers." He wonders just why the cheese makers should be so blessed.

The last bumper sticker I noticed recently focused on government rather than religion, echoing the past proliferation of political messages on the old-time bumper stickers. It read, "Invest in America: Buy a Congressman." This missive, clearly bipartisan--though sexist in its rhetoric--singles out neither Democrats nor Republicans, the Reformed Party nor the Green Party. Apparently it is intended to be an equal-opportunity bumper sticker.

Might bumper stickers make a comeback in this age of conspicuous consumption of expensive cars and vanity license plates? Or will such pithy proverbs migrate through cyberspace to our computer screens?

In the meantime, let me know if you spot any interesting bumper stickers.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.