Exeter Messages Often Take the Form of ‘Tank-You’ Notes

People who want to promote a play or congratulate someone in Exeter just paint a message on the tank.

It’s not unusual for residents of other cities to advertise personal messages on billboards. In Exeter, the tank serves the same purpose for just the cost of paint and brushes.

The storage tank owned by citrus growers Dorsey and Nancy Atkinson sits alongside California 65 near the northern entrance to the Tulare County community.

The 50-year-old Atkinson said the tank was there when he was in high school, but painting messages on it became popular only when their sons, Kirk and Dave, were involved in junior high and high school sports in the late 1970s. Messages about water polo and football began blossoming on the sides of the circular concrete structure.

Since then, the town’s 6,000 residents have been allowed to put messages of their own on the tank as long as they keep them clean. The one time off-color graffiti cropped up, Atkinson found the culprit and made him paint over it.

Political endorsements and slogans are not allowed either, despite numerous requests in years past. Such requests are not made much anymore because everyone in Exeter seems to know the unwritten, unofficial rules, the Atkinsons said.

One rule is to deposit any trash accumulated during the paint job in a barrel hidden behind the tank.

During 1984, the tank promoted the local high school’s drama and displayed numerous congratulatory messages for birthdays, weddings and graduations as well as love notes that the writers did not mind airing in public.

A message painted during the holiday season cautioned people not to drink and drive.

Gary Dunn, managing editor of the weekly Exeter Sun newspaper, called the messages “a thermometer of the community.”

“We’ve had lots of fun from the tank,” Nancy Atkinson said. “It’s not abused, and that’s what makes it so enjoyable.”