Along Old Highways

Summer vacations were once upon a time colored by travel on two-lane highways that twisted and wound through pastoral farmland and small towns of backcountry America. Three and four lane interstate highways were still the stuff of dreams among civil engineers, and ‘getting there’ was a big part of family vacations. I remember those summer weeks, always too short, of driving with my mother, father and sisters to destinations like Pikes Peak, the grand and gloomy Mammoth Cave, Mt Vernon and Williamsburg, and oftentimes ending up at Gran’s house in Ocean View, Virginia.

We made our way to these places in the family car, a black 1948 Chevrolet, a car that memory tells me never felt crowded with two adults and three wiggly children. There were car games to fill the hours, most of them associated with passing scenery along those narrow roads bound by red clay and kudzu, with the occasional weathered country church. I remember one with its marquee in front bristling with black stick on letters warning in Old Testament fervor: ‘Don’t make me come down there—God.’

But our favorites on those road trips, and something that caught the attention of children and adults alike were the red and white signs spaced along the highway advertising Burma Shave.

Looking through the Garrison Keillor book of poems featured in these pages three days ago, Good Poems for Hard Times, I was delighted to come upon some of the old Burma Shave limericks from childhood days. In the flash of a moment the lines rose from a well of memory and for a minute or two the present faded and I was once again in the backseat of that 1948 Chevrolet, somewhere in the hinterlands of Kentucky.

Burma Shave signs appeared across most of the US between 1925 and 1963, more often along a monotonous stretch of rural road, placed in a staggered sequence easily readable from passing cars. Each series of signs was either five or six, always ending at the last sign with the words, “Burma Shave.” The men behind this advertising campaign probably never dreamed it would become one of the most memorable campaigns in US history. Burma Shave eventually became the number two selling shaving cream in the country, thanks to these hokey signs along country roads.

With the development of the interstate highway system and faster driving, roadside advertising entered the age of giant billboards set back at a distance from the roadway. In 1963 the Burma Shave signs came down, sales plummeted and the shaving cream finally discontinued in 1966. (It returned in 1994 but without the road signs.)

Below is a sampling of the old red and white signs familiar to many back in those old days.

THE QUEEN

OF HEARTS

NOW LOVES THE KNAVE

THE KING

RAN OUT OF

BURMA SHAVE

•••

IF YOU DRIVE

WHEN YOU’RE DRUNK

CARRY A COFFIN

IN YOUR TRUNK

BURMA SHAVE

•••

NO LADY LIKES TO DANCE

OR DINE

ACCOMPANIED BY

A PORCUPINE

BURMA SHAVE

•••

POOR SATAN, HE

WAS FORCED TO DWELL

IN THE ONLY PLACE WHERE

THEY DON’T SELL

BURMA SHAVE

•••

DOES YOUR HUSBAND MISBEHAVE

GRUNT AND GRUMBLE

RANT AND RAVE

SHOOT THE BRUTE SOME

BURMA SHAVE

•••

SLOWDOWN, PA

SAKES ALIVE

MA MISSED SIGNS

FOUR AND FIVE

BURMA SHAVE

•••

THE WHALE TOOK JONAH

DOWN THE HATCH

THEN COUGHED HIM UP

BECAUSE HE SCRATCHED

BURMA SHAVE