Yard sale signs seem to pop up on a regular basis in our area. They are prolific around neighborhoods from early spring through late fall. Luckily, they seem to appear for a week or two before an event and quickly disappear shortly after the event. These signs might be just a hand written piece of paper stapled to a telephone pole or as complex as an electronic message board beside a church or club. The whole point is to inform folks of location, date and time of the sale.
Our Ladies Auxiliary to the Boalsburg Fire Company will hold our fall Yard sale/Bake sale this coming weekend (September 11 & 12) at the Fire Hall. In preparation to attract folks, we have an assortment of large Yard Sale signs ready to go. My task was to post signs along the road that leads to the turn off to get to the Fire Hall. This road borders the local cemetery, so I didn’t have to ask permission from several neighbors to post the signs.
This year, I remembered long ago small signs advertising a shaving cream product…Burma-Shave…that were placed along the highway with a jingle. These signs were spaced far enough apart so we could read the jingle, and even though we really didn’t care about the product we loved reading the rhyme out loud! Now, it didn’t take much to remind people our age what I meant when I said I wanted to make a jingle on ‘Burma-Shave-like’ signs to advertise our yard/bake sale.
From Wikipedia
I took my idea to the local print shop and they knew exactly what I wanted! So, here is my ‘jingle:’
This is the first sign to announce the details:
The 6 smaller signs will follow the edge of the curb behind this sign down to the traffic light where another big sign with an arrow will lead folks to the Fire Hall. More signs from the other direction will also be placed, but they will be like the one above. I tried getting a picture of the whole string of signs, but they were so spread out you couldn’t read them from a distance! I’ll try to get better pictures this week…but there really was no way to stop in the middle of traffic to take pictures. (I need a better camera…or a better photographer!) The last sign has a big arrow telling people where to turn. I did add the date in the middle of the arrow…September 11 & 12.
You can see I had fun doing this, but we’ll see if anyone comments or feels the signs didn’t work. Be careful giving me an assignment…I might get creative! Enjoy!
Please email me directly if you have comments or questions: maryjkisner@gmail.com
More about the history of the Burma-Shave Advertisements (from Wikipedia):
“Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small sequential highway roadside signs. Typically, six consecutive small signs would be posted along the edge of highways, spaced for sequential reading by passing motorists. The last sign was almost always the name of the product. This use of a series of small signs, each of which bore part of a commercial message, was a successful approach to highway advertising during the early years of highway travel, drawing the attention of passing motorists who were curious to learn the punchline. As the Interstate system expanded in the late 1950s and vehicle speeds increased, it became more difficult to attract motorists’ attention with small signs.”
If you are interested in the complete list of the 600 or so known sets of signs, you can find them here: https://burma-shave.org/jingles. Here are a few that I found funny:
From 1931
Tho tough _ And rough _ From wind and wave _ Your cheek grows sleek _ With _ Burma Shave
From 1938
Henry the Eighth _ Prince of friskers _ Lost five wives _ But kept _ His whiskers _ Burma Shave
From 1947
In Cupid’s little _ Bag of trix _ here’s the one _ That clix _ With chix _ Burma Shave
From 1963
Every day _ We do _ Our part _ To make your face _ A work of art _ Burma Shave
Check out the whole list at the link above! Enjoy!