The Unlit Neon Sign of the El Trovatore Motel

In Kingman, Arizona, the El Trovatore Motel's neon sign stands on the main street, a cabinet of sheet steel held level on two posts above the sidewalk. The letters of the motel's name are spelled in glass tubes that run in open channels across the face of the sign.

The tubes are not a single piece. Each letter is a separate length of glass, bent at the corners and curved along its shape, with a seam where the two ends of the tube are fused together. Over that seam sits a small metal sleeve, and from the sleeve a wire lead is crimped to a pin. The pins are fed by stranded copper wires that gather at a conduit and drop to a transformer box fastened to the back of the cabinet. The transformer is what raises the house current to the voltage the gas needs. It sits inside a flat metal housing painted the same color as the rest of the sign.

The face of the cabinet is painted, and the paint has gone flat. It catches the light in no particular direction, returning a worn sheen that is even across the surface. The corners of the cabinet are struck and dented. The posts are steel channels set in concrete at the edge of the sidewalk. The concrete has cracked but still holds the steel. The face of the sign is open, so the tubes are exposed to the weather. Rain has left streaks on the metal, and fine dust has settled in the narrow gap between the glass and the clips that hold it.

The gas in the tubes is always there. At normal pressures it is transparent, which is why the unlit sign looks like bare glass. To give the tube its color, the gas has to be excited by several thousand volts. No voltage reaches this sign. The transformer is still wired into the circuit that once fed it, but no current is being supplied to it now. The sign does nothing.

All morning and all afternoon the traffic passes under the sign. The posts cast a shadow that moves across the pavement, shortening and then lengthening as the day wears on. The sign does not acknowledge this. It has no bulb to burn out, no starter to click, no moving part except the slight vibration that a heavy truck sets up when it roars underneath.

The clips that hold the tubes are thin strips of metal, wrapped around the glass and screwed to the cabinet with flat-head screws. They are spaced evenly along the length of each letter. Besides the electrodes, they are the only thing that touches the glass.

A lit neon sign hums at the frequency of the alternating current. This sign makes no sound. The wires that run from the transformer to the tubes carry no voltage, and the tubes give off no light.

At the ends of the tubes, where the glass meets the metal electrodes, a dark film has formed. That film is spent material from the electrodes, sputtered off during every minute the sign burned. It is permanent. It does not wash off, and it does not get lighter. It is the record of every hour the sign spent glowing, and it will remain after the transformer has gone silent. The film is gray, a deposit that becomes part of the glass itself.

The rest of the glass is clean. The tubes are intact, and every letter is still legible. The sign has never been pulled down. It stands where it was placed, over the same spot of concrete, in the same orientation toward oncoming traffic. The dark tubes sit in their clips, and no current passes through the gas inside them.