Putting this one is for that 4th panel. Lucy as a princess fits.
Dan Sachs sends this in, as a Geezer Alert. When was the last time any of us saw a set of Burma Shave signs?
Related
18 Comments
I’ve seen signs in the Burma-Shave style in the past decade or so. The graves here aren’t in the Burma-Shave style – those always rhymed and had small jokes. Something like, “Beneath these graves / with nice, clean shaves / lie those who wrote / our roadside notes. / Burma-Shave.”
Also “Burma-Shave” would never be spread across two signs, but that’s nitpicking. Still, it’s less of a “lol” and more of a “gosh this is lazy.”
The Burma-Shave advertising program ended in 1963, at which point I was too young to read (if indeed there were any signs in my part of rural Kentucky).
In the UK, I’ve only heard of Burma-Shave from the great Tom Waits song (and had to Google it to find out what Tom meant).
%&^$ WordPress!! I very meticulously made a URL to a specific comment in wich I had previously posted my last real world siting of a Burma Shave sign, and the damn thing munged the link and inserted some crap instead, that doesn’t even go to the specific comment! $%^&!!!!
There’s a fun book, The. verse By the Side of the Road, about the Nirma Shave signs.
My favorite was:
Slow down Pa
Sakes alive
Ma missed signs
Four and five
I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in the wild, but parodies of it remain in popular culture, and thanks to streaming reruns kids today are watching geezer media.
Back around 1985 I saw a set of signs on the side of the Florida Turnpike that went something like: Drove Too Long / Driver Snoozing / What Happens Next / Is Not Amusing and instead of “Burma-Shave” it ended with “Florida Turnpike Commission.” I think the rhyme was an original from Burma-Shave.
Carsland at Disney’s California Adventure has auto-centric parodies of several old Route 66 institutions, include a set of mock Burma Shave signs along a walkway.
I didn’t read all of them, but my memory makes them generally funnier than this list shows.
My favorite from “Verse by the Side of the Road”:
The Bearded Lady
Tried a jar.
She’s now
A famous
Movie star.
Burma Shave
larK (5): It’s okay, I figured it out.
@Chak (comment 10): The later verses were better. Scroll down and look at the later years.
It’s Myanmar. Why they changed it, I can’t say.
When I was a little kid, we drove from Chicagoland to Kansas and Oklahoma (and back) each summer. I don’t think I even knew what the product was, but I loved the doggerel on those signs on Routes 66 and 54.
And I just now read this in Saturday’s The Daily Cartoonist:
“Those of us old enough to remember the signs agreed that there’s no reason not to have Burma Shave signs anymore. Well, except for the company having gone out of business.”
The Burma Shave campaign ended when my parents were still in high school. And my mother was at Woodstock.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I’ve seen signs in the Burma-Shave style in the past decade or so. The graves here aren’t in the Burma-Shave style – those always rhymed and had small jokes. Something like, “Beneath these graves / with nice, clean shaves / lie those who wrote / our roadside notes. / Burma-Shave.”
Also “Burma-Shave” would never be spread across two signs, but that’s nitpicking. Still, it’s less of a “lol” and more of a “gosh this is lazy.”
The Burma-Shave advertising program ended in 1963, at which point I was too young to read (if indeed there were any signs in my part of rural Kentucky).
In the UK, I’ve only heard of Burma-Shave from the great Tom Waits song (and had to Google it to find out what Tom meant).
%&^$ WordPress!! I very meticulously made a URL to a specific comment in wich I had previously posted my last real world siting of a Burma Shave sign, and the damn thing munged the link and inserted some crap instead, that doesn’t even go to the specific comment! $%^&!!!!
https: //cidu.info/
2018/05/19/saturday-morning-oy-may-19-2018/#comment-5545
There’s a fun book, The. verse By the Side of the Road, about the Nirma Shave signs.
My favorite was:
Slow down Pa
Sakes alive
Ma missed signs
Four and five
I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in the wild, but parodies of it remain in popular culture, and thanks to streaming reruns kids today are watching geezer media.
Back around 1985 I saw a set of signs on the side of the Florida Turnpike that went something like: Drove Too Long / Driver Snoozing / What Happens Next / Is Not Amusing and instead of “Burma-Shave” it ended with “Florida Turnpike Commission.” I think the rhyme was an original from Burma-Shave.
Carsland at Disney’s California Adventure has auto-centric parodies of several old Route 66 institutions, include a set of mock Burma Shave signs along a walkway.
When I first saw this Burma Shave comic, I went looking for a list of all of them. Here it is, https://www.skypoint.com/members/schutz19/burma2.htm
I didn’t read all of them, but my memory makes them generally funnier than this list shows.
My favorite from “Verse by the Side of the Road”:
The Bearded Lady
Tried a jar.
She’s now
A famous
Movie star.
Burma Shave
larK (5): It’s okay, I figured it out.
@Chak (comment 10): The later verses were better. Scroll down and look at the later years.
It’s Myanmar. Why they changed it, I can’t say.
When I was a little kid, we drove from Chicagoland to Kansas and Oklahoma (and back) each summer. I don’t think I even knew what the product was, but I loved the doggerel on those signs on Routes 66 and 54.
And I just now read this in Saturday’s The Daily Cartoonist:
“Those of us old enough to remember the signs agreed that there’s no reason not to have Burma Shave signs anymore. Well, except for the company having gone out of business.”
The Burma Shave campaign ended when my parents were still in high school. And my mother was at Woodstock.
@Consul, the Almost Human:
People just liked it better that way.