While not the first time this story has been told, its humor is so off-kilter that, in a way, it makes sense. 

Should you find yourself on an airplane approaching the runway at Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, Wisc., look out the window; your heart may skip a beat when you see a sign painted on the roof of a building that reads “Welcome to Cleveland.”

A recent Reddit thread mention of the sign piqued this reporter’s interest enough to dig deeper. As it turns out, the sign is still there — we verified with Google Maps — and is even listed as a “landmark.”

The prank’s origin dates back 46 years. The secret to its longevity is likely the charm in its simplicity and the reactions it elicits —  allowing it to return to the headlines periodically. 

The signage sits atop the roof of artist Mark Gubin’s home and studio, a defunct single-screen theatre off Delaware Avenue that lines up brilliantly with the flight path to runway 19 at Mitchell International Airport. 

In 1978, the Milwaukee artist commented to his assistant about the volume of overhead air traffic while lunching on the roof of his studio one afternoon; she suggested he paint a ‘welcome’ sign, though the 6-foot-tall “Welcome to Cleveland” message he chose is likely not what she had in mind.

The misleading greeting has confused passengers flying into Mitchell International Airport ever since. "It was all tongue-in-cheek, just for fun,” he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "Living in the world is not a dress rehearsal. You better have fun with it."

The website Mental Floss said that when the sign first appeared, it made national news and was even mentioned by Johnny Carson on NBC’s "The Tonight Show."

For a time, the scuttlebutt was that flights from Denver to Cleveland making stopovers in Milwaukee required a special announcement informing passengers that the sign was merely a stunt by the owner of a Milwaukee building. 

The notoriety prompted Milwaukee’s then-City Council President Ben E. Johnson to send the artist a letter alerting him to the commotion Gubin’s stunt was causing. Yet the city took no action, and the joke lives on to this day.

The latest mention of the “Welcome to Cleveland” sign — before now —  was last June when Milwaukee’s alt-weekly, Shepherd Express, revisited the now time-honored prank.

Gubin is now 81, but nearly 20 years ago, the now-retired photographer, then 62, explained to the Milwaukee Sentinel: “There’s not a real purpose for having this here except the madness, which I tend to be pretty good at.”