Thursday, December 22, 2016

This One Is A Long, Long Way From Home


In keeping with my last post (with the note that heraldry can be found everywhere), I was driving recently here in Dallas, Texas, and found myself behind a car with this in the back window:


(I apologize for the fuzziness; I had a limited amount of time to get my cellphone out and snap this picture.)

The decal in the lower left (with the legend "My Daughter Is A United States Marine") is modestly heraldic, and the U.S. Army star might also be considered so, but what had attracted my eye and caused me to grapple my cellphone out of my pocket is, of course, the top one labeled "WIEN" above and "Österreich" below (what in English would be "Vienna, Austria").

Here are a couple of modern depictions of the arms of Vienna for comparison:



But in fact the decal is much closer to this rendition of the arms of Vienna from an old Wills's Cigarettes cards series, "Arms of Foreign Cities":


It's just not at all the sort of thing one would expect to find while driving around the streets of Dallas, Texas, on a fall afternoon. As I said, this one is a long, long way from home.

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