Now here's one you'd never guess had a courtroom in it. Pull up a seat — Boone Merrick's the name.
You've already seen it, and you'll see it a hundred more times before Traverse City: that white diamond with M-22 in it, printed on shirts, hats, stickers, coffee mugs, the back windows of half the cars on this road. It is, without much competition, the most beloved road sign in the state of Michigan.
It started ordinary. A couple of brothers up in Traverse City loved this drive — the way most everybody who does it loves it — and around two thousand three they started putting the highway shield on merchandise. Small outfit. Local thing. And it caught, the way these things sometimes do, because the sign wasn't really standing for a road anymore. It stood for the whole idea of up north: the water, the cherry stands, the summer you had when you were nineteen.
So they went and did what any business would. They trademarked it.
And that's when the State of Michigan looked up. Because a highway route marker isn't a logo somebody drew — it's an official traffic control device, and the design belongs to the public. The state said you cannot own this. The federal highway rules back that up: those shields are public property, by design, so that a road sign means the same thing to everybody.
It went to court. And the state won — the trademark was cancelled, on exactly that ground: you may not take a public traffic sign out of the commons and own it.
Now here's the part I like. It didn't matter. The shirts never stopped selling. You'll pass shops today with whole walls of that diamond, and nobody's breaking any law, because the sign belongs to everybody — which is precisely what the court said, and precisely why it means what it means. Some fool tried to buy the sunset. The judge said no, that's ours. And every one of those stickers on the cars around you has been quietly proving the judge right ever since.