If you're not in Baker County, does it really matter where you are?

Until I saw the sign I hadn't considered Baker County a particularly provincial place.

I don't mean to imply that, prior to sighting the sign, I assumed the people who live here do so grudgingly and with ill temper.

Most of us, I'm sure, harbor at least a smidgen of fondness for the county. Many love it.

Some level of affection, at any rate, is the only logical explanation I can come up with for why presumably sane people accept snow which lingers into April as a matter of course.

This sign, though, prompted me to ponder the question of how we rate our county, as it were, against our neighbors.

To set the scene, I was driving east on the dirt road that leads from Malheur Reservoir to Huntington. Most of this route runs, as you no doubt figured, through Malheur County. You see a lot of sagebrush when you go that way. Actually you see a lot of sagebrush most any way you go in Malheur County.

The sign was yellow, and printed on it was this: "Entering Baker County."

The presence of this sign surprised me.

I knew, having perused a map, that Baker and Malheur counties rub shoulders somewhere in the vicinity.

Still, I never expect to find county line signs in such places, where you hardly ever can see two buildings at once and where you're more apt to need to swerve to miss a coyote than a cocker spaniel.

I think it was the rarity of the sign that persuaded me to look back as I rolled past it. I did so, craning my neck at any unpleasant angle, even though I was sure I knew what I would see.

"Entering Malheur County."

Except I was wrong.

What I was read was this: "Leaving Baker County."

My wife Lisa and I both laughed.

Our daughter, Olivia, did not react in any discernible way. Of course she's only 10 months old and thus far has shown little interest in signs. She is, however, obsessed with remote controls.

I don't know why this sign tickled me so thoroughly, although partly it was the utter disregard for Malheur County. It's some stretch to attribute snobbery to a sign, of course. Yet it seemed to me the height of hilarity that that sign stands there, right on the line that divides two counties, yet it tells travelers that, basically, Baker County is the only one that matters, that the other county is so forgettable, so irrelevant, that there's no need even to name it.

I suppose someone from Malheur County might feel aggrieved, rather than amused, by this situation.

This is easy enough to rectify.

Just put up a Malheur County-only sign on the other side of the road.

I doubt that a feud over county boundary signs will ever challenge, say, the Baker Bulldogs-Ontario Tigers rivalry for competitive supremacy.

But it might be good for a couple laughs.

And you can never have too many of those.

. . .

Some cretin painted an upside-down cross, festooned with a trio of "6's," on the outside wall of the Elkhorn Community Church.

Few symbols disgust Christians more than that one.

The mark offends me, but what bothers me even more is the blatant disrespect for private property.

If you must display an upside down cross, then paint one on a T-shirt, or right on your bare stomach if you'd rather not ruin a shirt.

Then go stand on the sidewalk in front of the church. Or walk down Main Street. It is, as the saying goes, a free country.

But please don't compound your bigotry by vandalizing a building.

Besides, it's a big waste of paint.

Jayson Jacoby is editor of the Baker City Herald.