signage graveyard, Virginia, northern Minnesota

Coming across this signage company's yard yesterday in Virginia, a town on the Iron Range in northern Minnesota, was an odd experience. I always imagined that gas stations and other companies stripped their stores themselves when they closed down but apparently, companies like the Mesabi Sign Co. provide that service. What happens to signs when they are dismantled, I wonder? There's a certain melancholy (to use a word that others have mentioned here recently) in the way that these once powerful symbols of consumerism are stacked together, awaiting their fate. There are lots of metaphors begging discussion here but I'll resist for now. I'll write more about Virginia and share some more photographs soon, though.