Roadside Poetry

If you are among the unfortunate who had never experienced cross-country road travel back in the 1950s and 1960s you missed the little red Burma Shave signs. Sequential placards with whimsical limericks sponsored by Burma Shave. The little red signs were usually spaced fifty or sixty feet apart and usually tacked to wooden fence posts. There typically would be five or six little 1-foot by 3-foot red signs with two or three words all in a clever rhyme ending with Burma Shave. A shave cream sold back in the 1940s and up into current times. My dad on our road trips would spot these signs and alert us restless kids as we approached each sign.

They would read something like this:

He held her close.

He said he gotta.

I would like my sweet

A Green chili enchilada.

BURMA SHAVE