I’ve had occasion to drive to Salina a lot recently — six times in the past couple of months — and it’s made me more familiar with a stretch of road that I hadn’t traveled much. It’s also made me more familiar with the ice-creamy goodness that is Braum’s. But I digress…

On my first trip, I was looking out the window as billboard after billboard disappeared behind me. Then, all of a sudden, I saw it. The best billboard I’ve ever laid eyes on. Across the middle, in great big text, it said “YARNS.” And above it, in perfectly legible black letters: “2nd Friendliest Yarn Store in the Universe.”

The joke is just too good. It’s hilarious to claim you’re the second most anything in a country obsessed with being first. And they are not just the second friendliest yarn store in the state, the nation, or the world, but in the UNIVERSE. (The yarn stores on Mars are notorious for their rudeness, second only to the French.)

The truth is that most billboards just aren’t very good. They have too much information. The text is too small. And they don’t have one main element that pulls you in. The 2nd Friendliest Yarn Store billboard managed to avoid all of those issues…and it gave me one heck of a laugh. All in the five seconds while I drove by.