No Burma Shave Here!

We drove through Holland Patent on a gloomy winter day last week. We passed by the “Window King” R.A. Dudrak and these delightful signs brightened the day!

HAHA! I liked that last sign. It alludes to the old Burma Shave road signs, popular in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s when Americans hit the roads in droves. It was a time of great optimism and prosperity. The road trip was king.

Burma Shave was a shaving cream, manufactured by the Burma-Vita company. Sales for the cream were less than enthusiastic, so the company started an advertising campaign that later entered the annals of American culture. They placed signs with brief snippets of limericks along roadways. At first the signs were pure advertisements, such as these:

A shave
That’s real
No cuts to heal
A soothing
Velvet after-feel
-Burma-Shave

You’ve laughed
At our signs
For many a mile
Be a sport
Give us a trial
-Burma-Shave

Later, the signs became little stories or humorous admonitions against speeding and driving drunk. Always, the last sign said simply “Burma Shave.”

Hardly a driver
Is now alive
Who passed
On hills
At 75
-Burma-Shave

Past
Schoolhouses
Take it slow
Let the little
Shavers grow
-Burma-Shave

If daisies
Are your
Favorite flower
Keep pushin’ up those
Miles per hour
-Burma-Shave

The actual shaving cream was never as popular as the company’s advertising campaign. Sales declined and Burma-Shave was sold to Philip Morris in 1963. The company pulled the ads and thus ended another quirky icon in American road trip travel history. A shame.

But there are a few of us who still remember Burma Shave! It was nice to see that the Window King of Holland Patent remembered.

Spittoon Collection

Well here’s something unusual! I was browsing Roadside America.com and saw a new article “World’s Finest Spittoon Collection.” ROFL! Boy, I wonder what kind of draw that museum gets.

The gulf between the Yankees and the Rebels appears to have widened of late, particularly when it comes to roadside attractions. So it was refreshing to read that a man in Jewett City (Connecticut) and a museum in Durham (North Carolina) have joined forces to bring to the public what is perhaps the world’s finest collection of spittoons.

According to an article in the Norwich Bulletin, 252 of the 282 spittoons owned by Jim Kinner have been purchased by the state of North Carolina for the Duke Homestead State Historic Site and Tobacco Museum, to add to its permanent spittoon collection. The Museum already has “one of the few spittoon exhibits in the country,” according to the news story

Yessirree, nothing like cans and cans of discarded saliva to bring North and South together at last. OooK.

Entrecard Travel Blog Update

Things have been a little slow in the travel blog realm this week. I suppose we are all in a lull, waiting until spring really starts to arrive. New York tourist areas are still closed, and most don’t open until after Memorial Day (that has got to change– why so late?!). Nonetheless, I’ve found some interesting places for us armchair travelers.

Central Perk is a new blog I found. I love the name. It’s written by a guy from Georgia, lol! His posts- what few there are as of yet– are historically-minded, so I like them. This one on Yankee Stadium (a good one to read for you who are gearing up for baseball season) and Rockefeller Center are very thorough and good reading.

Popular travel blogger Trip the Lady had an enjoyable post on Providence Canyon, GA. She is also branching out with a new blog, Dinner and a Blog. The recipes- some inspired by her travels– look sooo good. Don’t visit this blog when you are hungry, it will drive you nuts, lol.

There are some good non-Entrecard blogs I’m watching. Roadside America is finally joining the blogging community. I’m looking forward to this expansion of their website. And Kango Blog is getting some attention. I love Kango Blog (see the search feature in my sidebar) and it is filling the need for a good travel blog search engine. It’s still being built (covers only the west coast of the US right now), but it’s off to a fast and fantastic start.