Poems on the Side of the Road

I remember taking road trips back in the 50s and early 60s with my family when I was younger. Mom, Sis and I would pile into the car and Dad, a professional driver of both trucks and buses would take us to places like Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. This was in the days before the Interstate Highway system was finished. Much of the time was spent on US Highways. There weren’t many bypasses around the towns and there were still lots and lots of billboards. But the things we enjoyed the most (besides hunting license plates) were the poems on the sides of the road.

From the 1920s through the mid 1960s the highways and byways of our nation were dotted with tiny little signs that entertained, amused and advertised all at once. I’m talking about the Burma Shave signs. When travel was necessarily slow because of the design of the automobile and the road itself, the drivers and passengers could easily read the short messages on the 5 to seven little red and white signs that formed each poem.
Here is a sample of what those signs communicated:

On curves ahead
Remember, sonny
That rabbit's foot
Didn't save
The bunny
Burma-Shave

My job is
Keeping faces clean
And nobody knows
De stubble
I've seen
Burma-Shave

Candidate says
Campaign
Confusing
Babies kiss me
Since I've been using
Burma-Shave

[To read more go here.]

Today all I’ve seen along the highways that come close are the signs for South of the Border on I-95 and for Wall Drug along I-90. Of the two, I prefer Wall Drug for both content and originality. The place has a story as well as history. It may be touristy, but, more importantly, it isn’t South of the Border. Wall Drug also started back in the late 1930s during the hay days of the Burma Shave campaign.)

You also used to be able to see all the barns and tobacco sheds down south painted in black, yellow and white by the Mail Pouch Tobacco folks. (See here, here, and here.)

Related Posts:
Hunting License Plates
Be a Traveler, Not a Tourist