Rhymes on the Road

"Slow down, Daddy, slow down!"

"Who has to go now?" rasped Peter Mathews as he eased up on the gas. But this time he was wrong. As he slowed down, the youngsters chanted the legend on the staggered signs along the road:

No lady likes ... to dance or dine ...

Accompanied by ... a porcupine

Burma-Shave

Such fresh little jingles, which Mathews and other U.S. motorists have found a bright spot in the monotony of driving, have been an even brighter spot to the Burma-Vita Co., makers of Burma-Shave. Thanks to this form of advertising, the company has doubled and redoubled sales of its brushless cream to a current gross of some $3,000,000 a year.

Last week, the Burma-Vita Co. was freshening up its fun for motorists. It had completed the big job of selecting 25 new jingles from the 50,000 which amateur versifiers submitted. And it started repainting its 40,000 signs, in the first complete overhaul since 1941, with such deathless new lines as:

The wolf who loves to roam & prowl

Should shave before he starts to howl.

Burma-Vita was also reviving and refreshing some favorites from other years:

If you think she likes your bristles

Walk barefoot through some thistles.

The bearded lady tried a jar

She's now a famous movie star.

Said Juliet to Romeo

If you won't shave, go homeo.

Within this vale of toil and sin

Your head grows bald but not your chin.

A peach looks good with lots of fuzz

But man's no peach and never was.

The best of these jingles are such a neat blend of humor, whimsey and corn that they seemed to come from the pen of an old master. Not so. The nearest thing in Burma-Vita to an old master is the man who started them, and the company as well--Allan Gilbert Odell, 42, the athletic vice president and sales manager of the company. He devoted so much of his youth to basketball and football that he acquired a thorough interest in liniments. By the time he graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1925, he decided to produce and market a liniment of his own, got his father, Clinton Odell, to back him in the formation of Burma-Vita Co. (of which the elder Odell is still president).

The liniment flopped. A new shaving cream, a brushless one concocted by a company chemist, did little better, until Allan got his big idea. One day in 1926, he climbed into his car, drove out into the country near Minneapolis, posted signs so spaced and inscribed that a speeding motorist could read as he rode:

Cheer up . . . face . . . the war . . . is over! . . . Burma-Shave

So many motorists commented on how "your signs read almost like verses"--and so many began to buy Burma-Shave--that Odell decided to expand his idea. One of his first jingles was:

Rip a fender off your car

Mail it in for a half-pound jar.

A score of ripped fenders were mailed in (though the Odells insist that no motorist has ever cracked up because of the signs), and Burma-Vita duly paid off.

The signs became so popular and so many jingles were sent in to Burma-Vita that Allan Odell gave up writing them. The company also bought a few contributions from such professional wordsters as Berton Braley, Ted Cook, J. P. McEvoy. But most of the jingles which Odell rapidly spread across the U.S. came in as the result of Burma-Vita's offer to pay $100 for every one used. Some of the contributions Burma-Vita would like to use but doesn't lest they offend public taste. One of the more printable rejects:

Listen, birds, these signs cost money

So roost a while but don't get funny.

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