num_pages: 121
description: The story of the Burma-Shave signs and jingles. After decades of enlivening motor travel, the Burma-Shave highway signs and rhymes are one with Nineveh and Tyre. They have gone the way of the ice wagon, the steam locomotive whistle, and other vanished sights and sounds whose memory sets American heart strings vibrating with more than ordinary nostalgia. Beginning with a few sets of signs along Highway 65 in Minnesota, this fabulous and funny "commercial Mother Goose" grew into a national institution numbering over 7,000 sets in 43 states. Motorists could quote "Oh Louise" and "the ten-ounce jar" after a trip to almost anywhere. It was that miracle of advertising, a campaign, that made everybody happy. Not "hard sell" nor "soft sell," rather it was a "friendly sell" that kept the cash registers ringing with coin while the customers rang with laughter.
language: English
title: The Verse by the Side of the Road: the Story of the Burma-Shave Signs and Jingles
titlecomplete: The Verse by the Side of the Road: the Story of the Burma-Shave Signs and Jingles
genres: Humor, History, Design, Nonfiction, Americana, Business, Poetry
ratings_count: 152
publisher: Stephen Greene Press