Burma Shave

[Knighted_Vorpal_Sword]

Are there any original Burma Shave signs left out on the highways?

[Eve]

Once the highways
All did wave
With those signs
Both bold and brave.
But Lady Bird said they must go—
So today you will see no
BURMA SHAVE

[Cliffy]

That notwithstanding, I’m pretty sure I saw a set on a highway in the South somewhere several years ago.

–Cliffy

[mobo85]

It’s quite possible there is, though not intentionally. By 1963, the manufacturer of Burma-Shave was sold to Philip Morris’s American Safety Razor division. Because of television and such, the signs were no longer needed. There is a set in the Smithsonian (“Within this vale/of toil/and sin/your head grows bald/but not your chin-use/Burma Shave”), and other sets on display elsewhere. But are there any still on the roads? Who knows? As Frank Rowsome, Jr. wrote in his wonderful book on the Burma-Shave signs, The Verse by the Side of the Road,

Perhaps it is a quirk of memory or some persistence of vision, but many people will assure…a set was noticed just a few weeks ago…So far as is known, this is an illusion…(Yet with some thirty-five thousand individual signs once planted around the nation, it is certainly not impossible for a few to have evaded the dismantling crews[)]…The question of the physical existence of…remaining signs is scarcely worth a search program. (Rowsome 67)

It should be noted that when American Safety Razor brought back the Burma-Shave brand around eight years ago, they used the famous signs in their advertising.

[sub]Work Cited:
Rowsome, Frank Jr. The Verse by the Side of the Road: The Story of the Burma-Shave Signs and Jingles. New York: Penguin/Plume, 1965.
[/quote]

[I_can_t_believe_that_s_butter]

I saw a Burma Shave-style sign on MacArthur Blvd. between 164th and 178th streets (for all you OKC-area dopers) about 8-10 years ago…though I think it might have been a bible verse.

I’ll try to find a link on this, but I remember reading in Reminisce magazine at the same time that they planned (or were going) to put a set of authentic Burma Shave signs in all 50 states.

[ftg]

Note that a. Burma Shave signs are collectibles worth $ and b. that the signs are just sitting out there next to the road, that we can conclude c. no more signs by the road.