No Trespassing!

On the way up the hill towards the fabled crossing of Belvidere and Belvédère, a crossing which actually no longer exists since the names were changed due to the merging of our municipality with the larger one next door, and which technically never did exist because the street name had already changed halfway up the hill as my town abutted the next one over, on what would still be called Belvidere if it had not recently been renamed College, is a Baptist church. One enters the property by a rather long driveway and the building itself is separated from the road by a small pond, in the middle of which is a tiny island, reminiscent of all those Hägar the H0rrible cartoons where the main character and his less than briliant sidekick with the funnel on his head find themselves castaway. Upon this island there is now a windmill, the kind you find driving through the countryside, adorning the acreage of ancient farms. I’m sure it is for decoration only, but it replaces a sign which has since been moved to the side of the road, and of which I was able to take a picture the other day as I traversed the snowy highways and biways to get to where I needed to be.

Translated into English the sign reads: “You must be born again (with the appropriate reference in John, which I cannot make out from the photo). The wage of sin. It is death: the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ.”

This not the first signboard, but the second that has been in front of this establishment since we moved here almost 20 years ago. In French, as you may or may not know, upper case letters are exempt from accents, and the first sign accordingly had left them out, which meant that the pertinent part of the printed portion read: LE SALAIRE DU PECHE, C’EST LA MORT. Not having been raised in the Christian faith, and being rather unknowledgeable about the contents of the Christian Bible, I was heretofore unacquainted with this particular phrase. Added to my less than stellar ability in French, I could only conjecture what the message meant, especially when taken with the strategic placement of the sign, on an island in a pond at the side of the road.

In French, the word péché means: sin, trespass, offend. Hence, pécheur is a sinner, trespasser, etc. The word pêche means: peach. This really has nothing to do with today’s message; I just threw it in there to mess you around. The word pèche means: fishing, angling. Hence, pècheur is a fisherman. There are quite a few stores around here dedicated to sportsmen who pursue “chasse et pèche”.

I’m sure you’ve already caught the point I’m trying to make here. Not aware that I had to be born again in order live life eternal, I translated the sign thusly:

FISHING IS FORBIDDEN. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PUT TO DEATH.

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