Greetings From the Front Lawn

Yard Cards Put Our Sentiments Right Out Front

A Happy 40th Birthday display featuring pink flamingoes decorates an Ellicott City lawn. There's an oversize front-yard card to mark almost every occasion. (Lois Raimondo - The Washington Post)

Dawn Coolahan's workday starts when she loads her minivan with six-foot plywood cards of gorillas, teddy bears and girls popping out of cakes -- and miniature gravestones, too.

"I admit this job is a little weird," she says. And you have to agree with her. As owner of Card in-the Yard in Howard County, Coolahan installs giant, sprawling greeting cards on front lawns for birthdays and anniversaries.

This is a new way people in the suburbs talk to each other. Even though they spend more time hunkered down indoors with computers and flat-screen TVs, 21st-century suburbanites still want to communicate with their neighbors (and anyone else who happens to drive by).

"Sure, this stuff is in your face," Coolahan says of the great public celebration playing out on the nation's cul-de-sacs. "This is what the business of spreading cheer is all about."

Once upon a time, a blue ribbon tied on a mailbox was enough to announce a baby boy's arrival. Today, towering fiberglass storks plunked down in front of a house broadcast the name and weight of the latest family member.

"Americans like the grand gesture," says John R. Logan, a professor of sociology at Brown University. "Yes, some people might think some of this is a bit tacky, but it is expressive."

Actually, Logan says, yard cards and other front-lawn pronouncements are not always done for the neighbors, but often for the homeowners themselves: "It's a statement about what is important to them and their family. Doing something in a public way may make it more special to them."

It's a trend that can be traced to the plastic pink flamingos of the 1950s, which are still around today. They are, perhaps, the longest-lasting front-yard art. Beginning in the 1970s, decorative flags with dancing leprechauns or martini glasses were hung near front doors across the nation. More recently, enormous inflatable figures of pumped-up NFL linebackers, Frosty the Snowman or bears cradling dreidels have sent seasonal messages to passersby.

Houses all over America are sending out signals.

In Tennessee, one entrepreneur tried renting gigantic gold messenger angels to homeowners. In Illinois, your 50th birthday can be commemorated with an eight-foot Grim Reaper holding a cupcake in one hand and a sickle in the other. In Oklahoma, a company called Smiles for All Occasions offers for rent a birthday display made of 22 red, black and pink cloth bras (in sizes from A to DDD). It's called "We Support Your Growing Older."

Decorating the front of a house is more than just celebratory, says David Edwards, owner of Festival Flags in Richmond, a city where seasonal flags are still a common part of the landscape. It's emblematic of the American culture of communicating who we are.

"Look at people who put bumper stickers all over their cars and wear T-shirts with messages on them," he says. Festival Flags, which was started 35 years ago, now does a lot of business in custom-designed nylon flags ($100 to $200). Recently he sewed two flags of cats, which were designed from photographs. The pet owner wanted the flags to commemorate her beloved felines, who are deceased.