“I’m from North Carolina, where we say hi to people,” explains Thad Davis, who set out to spread good cheer by greeting people yesterday morning in Providence. Providence Journal photo / Andrew Dickerman

PROVIDENCE — A cigar-chomping guy jumped off a bus and walked by snickering: “What’s with the ‘good morning’?”

And the watchful police sergeant working a nearby road detail ventured over and couldn’t resist: “You in a good mood or something?”

A man who stands in a busy downtown intersection holding out a handmade sign will usually provoke a singular reaction. And that reaction is no reaction — as in: ignore, overlook … get out of the way, I have to get to work.

But neither motorists nor pedestrians could ignore the man in the pale blue shirt and bright white sneakers yesterday morning standing between the Providence Biltmore andThe Westin Providence hotels.

Why, he wasn’t asking for a thing; their befuddled faces finally began to register with the slimmest of smiles.

He was offering something.

“Good morning!” exclaimed Thad Davis to everyone around him.

He twisted to the left, to the right, and checked behind him, leading always with a waving hand. “Good morning! ... How are you? ... Have a good day!”

He carried his sign in the other hand. Drawn with a hotel pen on the back of a 55-cent UPS envelope, it offered the same wake-up greeting, though reflecting the Southern, folksy vernacular he’s used to: “Good Mornin’.”

“I’m from North Carolina, where we say hi to people,” he began to explain.

Davis, 41, a freight train conductor on the Norfolk Southern out of Bellevue, Ohio, arrived on his first visit to New England on Wednesday with his wife, Kathleen.

She’s an assistant director of a residential-care facility back in Van Wert, Ohio, where the Davises and their four children live. She’s attending a mental-health conference in Providence.

On Thursday, while his wife was at her conference, Davis, a curious guy, took his first stroll through a New England city, testing some of his preconceived notions of New Englanders.

“I had heard that people in Maine were friendly but real quiet with a dry sense of humor and that people from Boston, well I went to school with a couple kids from Boston and I think there’s a certain arrogance with people from Boston.”

Davis had heard little about those from the littlest state, but during his walk Thursday through downtown and Providence Place mall he came away thinking Rhode Islanders were, well, kind of glum.

“I wouldn’t say they’re friendly but they’re civil.”

Back in the hills of Polk County, N.C., where Davis grew up, offering greetings to people you meet on the street is as natural as chompin’ on pulled pork during a NASCAR race.

He got an idea. While his wife took in her morning conference sessions yesterday, he would take to the street and try to brighten people’s spirits.

By 8 a.m., he had found a nice spot at the tip of a traffic island across from Burnside Park.

He instantly upset the daily equilibrium of urban ambivalence.

People stared. Drivers shot double-takes as they passed by his sign. Others offered obligatory waves, as reactive as swatting at a passing fly.

But there also came cracks in all those glum expressions.

One lady in a maroon sedan couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She rolled down her window and gawked.

“Good morning! How are you?” said Davis.

“Good morning,” the young lady said, then beamed back a wide smile before driving away.

One police officer in a cruiser swung by and stopped, too.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Yes sir, that’s all it is.”

The officer drove away, grinning.

“Some people sometimes look at me like I’m silly,” he said. “Others just think I’m panhandling until they read the sign again.”

At about 11 a.m., Davis put away his sign and headed for the mall, where he would meet his wife for lunch.

What did he learn from his three hours in a Providence intersection?

“Well, the people seemed to appreciate it.… No one told me to screw myself.”

Said Davis: “I don’t think I changed anybody’s life, but I hope I made their day a little better. Maybe it will become a movement.”

tmooney@projo.com