![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In 1937, the company started putting up safe-driving rhymes, the kind Florida's DOT is using today. "Does your Husband, Rant and rave? Grunt and grumble? Misbehave? Shoot the brute, Some, Burma-Shave." It seemed playfully to urge wives to kill their husbands: ![]() Perhaps the cleverest of all appeared in 1930. Eventually, the signs were in every state except Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico, where there was so little traffic that they weren't worth the trouble. The first ones sprouted near Minneapolis and by 1926 had spread to Wisconsin and Iowa. The younger Odell got the idea for roadside advertising from filling station signs. Aerosol shaving cream lay far in the future. The oil in the cream came from Burma and Malaysia, hence the name.īefore Burma-Shave, American men were using soap and shaving brushes. The original Burma-Shave was modeled on a British cream named Lloyd's Euxesis, and the Burma-Vita firm of Minneapolis was originally interested in marketing a liniment. Rowsome interviewed Leonard Odell, son of Clinton Odell, who in 1925 decided to try to make and sell the stuff. Over the years, no fewer than 600 roadside rhymes were composed, and they all appear in a delightful 1965 book by Frank Rowsome Jr., "The Verse By the Side of the Road." The book is out of print but is still available on for as little as $1. ![]()
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