Sticker Shock #4: Grinders

This late addition to our summer series on poets, cars, and driving begins with a multiple choice test: Which one of the following people or places does not appear in a Charles Dickens novel?
1) Mr. Gradgrind
2) Rob the Grinder
3) Grindstone City
4) Stone House

If you answered #3, Grindstone City, you are correct. It's in Michigan, not Manchester, and for years was home to the Alternative Press. We have previously featured bumperstickers created by TAP founders Ken and Anne Mikolowski in collaboration with poets Edward Dorn, Diane di Prima, and Robert Creeley. Today, at last, we present one of Ken's own "functional poems," pictured above and below.

The Dickens connection is not entirely a red herring. I found the bumpersticker in the Alternative Press archives of the Berg Collection in the New York Public Library on 42nd St. The collection is renowned for its holdings of Dickens materials. In addition to rare editions and original illustrations, it houses one of Dickens's writing desks and a pet cat's paw he preserved. The NYPL copy of Ken's bumpersticker had been folded for decades concealing the text: "An Alternative Press Bumpersticker" and an illustration that has a Dickensian touch:

(*Mr. Gradgrind is the schoolmaster in Hard Times, and Stone House is his school. Rob the Grinder, aka, Robin Toodle, is the son Polly (Paul's nurse) in Dombey and Son.)