SIGNS OF THE TIMES . . .

They were  everywhere !

    At my age, antique malls can be a "mixed blessing". . . often wondering how an item used in my youth has suddenly been  deemed 'Antique'.

 Yesterday, we were poking around one of our favorite 'treasure chests' when I spotted the above beauty.  Quite likely the picture will not resonate with many below 'a certain age' because

the signs are no longer a feature of the American highways.

In 1960, John Steinbeck travelled across  the United States with   his French Poodle, Charles le Chien, and from that trip wrote Travels with Charlie.  Interstate highways, aka 'Superhighways', were just becoming  common and Steinbeck lamented  that the time was soon coming when it would be possible to travel coast to coast without seeing anything distinctive on the landscape.

    Hasn't always been that way.  Until thirty or so years ago, rare was the town or city with its own bypass for avoiding the numerous stoplights. Consequently, it required much longer just to get from here to there.  Today, billboards along the Interstates loom large in order to be read quickly when cars  are zipping along at high speeds.  Among the first highway advertisements, Burma Shave jingles 'were everywhere'  until around 1963.  The slower speeds of those years permitted reading the poetic segments which were placed on slats, each on a pole about ten feet above ground and placed perhaps fifty yards apart.  So the 'poem' pictured above likely was not a solitary entity.

(To read about the history of the Burma Shave signs, enter that in your  search engine.)

Between my hometown and Raleigh, the state capital, on a rather winding  road, I remember this ditty:

Spring has Sprung/

The  Grass has riz/

Where last year's/

Careless Driver Is/

Burma Shave

Always the tag line was the  same:  Burma Shave.

If 'ubiquitous' means 'everywhere', then the only  ubiquitous competition those advertisements had in this region was "SEE  ROCK  CITY", the admonishment painted on the side of many farmers' barns.  I never felt deprived during my youth that I never saw the place which is just outside Chattanooga, Tennessee.  

I wrote my own little jingle about these signs from another time:

While traveling down/

 the 'Road of Life'/

A sign you'll see/

'No turning back'/

For you or me/

Not even to find Burma Shave signs, though Rock City still awaits my visit.

Satchel