The Verse by the Side of the Road: The Story of the Burma-Shave Signs

ALL REGIONS. 
History. 

Burma-Shave, so named due to product lineaments originating from Burma (Myanmar), was one of the first “brushless” shaving creams; lathering up having commonly required a soap cake applied with a wet brush back in the day. Introduced in the 1920s, it took a while to catch on. But due to a stroke of marketing genius it had some help: the one-time Burma-Shave roadside “rhymes” to be seen along the rapidly expanding pre-interstate roadsides in nearly every corner of the United States. Consisting of six rectangular signs (mostly red with white lettering), and spaced out sequentially to be read even at high speed, they entertained as they sold the Burma-Shave product. The first of these roadside rhymes appeared in 1926 along Highway 65 in Lakeville, Minnesota, and were nothing but ad, if humorous (a proven ad tactic, it should be noted). But it was not long before the roadside rhymes expanded into whimsical poems, with often the final sign being the only reminder of the Burma-Shave brand. The signs would eventually make it into 43 states and became a motorist tradition that stretched on into the 1950s. The increasing speed of automobiles and arrival of the Interstate Highway System would render the sign-ad-rhymes a thing of a more primitive motorist past (this in synch with the Burma-Shave company’s fortunes itself, which were failing by the 1960s). But across the middle of the 20th century, these 6-sign rhymes seemed right up there with apple pie as an American mainstay, really a national phenomenon, with such musings as: Hinky Dinky / Parley Voo / Cheer Up Face / The War / Is Thru / Burma-Shave Lawyers, Doctors / Sheiks And Bakers / Mountaineers And Undertakers / Make Their Bristly Beards Behave / By Using Brushless / Burma-Shave Said Juliet / To Romeo / If You / Won’t Shave / Go Homeo / Burma-Shave For the author Frank Rowsome, Jr., (also an editor for Popular Science and technical writer for NASA) writing this book was clearly a nostalgic trip into his, and America’s, recent past (the book originally published in 1965). Not only did he document the “viral-like” spread of Burma-Shave’s hit “verse by the side of the road” campaign, but he impressively listed every one of the 600 6-sign rhymes by year of their appearance in an index at the back. If quaint seeming by the raucous and reactionary 1960s, that such a thing as a simple ad campaign whose intent seemed as much, if not more, the amusement of passers-by as selling a few tubes of shave cream, it serves to remind us of a nation’s civic heartbeat and that we all share in, and are active guardians of, a collective experience. [Condition: Used Very Good. Though the dust-jacket on this 1975 printing shows age discoloration and the top end of the interior pages some foxing due likely to many humid years sitting on a shelf, the book’s cover, binding, and interior pages are in as “Like New” condition as a 50+ year old book can be.] 

Condition: Used Very Good. 
Nonfiction / History. 
Frank Rowsome, Jr. / Illustrated by: Carl Rose. 
Stephen Greene Press (Brattleboro, VT), 1975 (original © 1965)
Hardcover, 122 pgs, 5.25 x 8.25" / 10 oz