DOT takes a hint from Burma-Shave

All of us behind the wheel should be pleased that the Iowa Department of Transportation has adopted the style of Burma-Shave jingles. If you have gray hair, you should remember the roadside jingles that went like this:

Around

The curve

Lickety-split

It's a beautiful car

Wasn't it?

Red Burma-Shave signs, an icon of America's roadways, tickled the fancy of drivers from 1925 until the 1940s. Unto this day, they were judged to be the most successful advertising promotion of all time. But the company was sold and all 35,000 Burma Shave signs were uprooted.

Enter now, the Iowa Department of Transportation with safety-angle "Burma Shave" doggerel on those giant electronic overhead signs over interstate highways. For a decade, only safety warnings occasionally flashed before motorists' eyes. Now, the electronic signs are perked up with Burma Shave-style messages like:

 "One text or call

Can wreck it all."

 Another:

"See tracks.

Think train."

All jingles have an emphases on safety and will appear only on Mondays. Don't look for them on any other day of the week.

"If we did the same messages daily, motorists would tend to ignore them. They would not pay much attention to them," says Doug Rick, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Transportation. "The regular warning messages about construction, road conditions and such things will continue."

Mike Whalen, the Quad-City entrepreneur, has been one of the leading supporters of messages on those overhead signs. His idea was to mix serious warnings with wake-up messages. He once suggested: "Have you flossed your teeth today?"

None of us are perfect, young man

I wrote on May 19 about being flustered at my high school graduation. In leading the Pledge of Allegiance before a few hundred people, my tongue flipped and I said "predge" instead of "pledge." There were murmurs.

A Davenport elementary teacher called to tell of a young man who led his class in the pledge and got a little tongue-tied. He said, "I led the pigeons to the flag."

Add-cetera

Oh, unhappy burger day. Iowa City's Hamburg Inn, celebrated in magazines, books, the noospapers and on national TV, has been seriously damaged by fire. One can only wonder where students, faculty and political candidates will dine. The place is nationally known for its coffee bean poll. Coffee beans, one to a customer, were dropped into bowls for their choice of a Democrat or Republican president. Democrats usually won.

WE ARE HUSTLING around the house, planning to move to smaller digs. This means tidying up our present condo. My wife's first challenge was to clean my closet, a catastrophe of shoes and shirts and tennis balls. After writing about that mess, Helen received calls of sympathy. She reminds there is an addendum to the story. She found 116 wire coat hangers and one heavy wooden one with the name Statler Hotel, Philadelphia, stamped on it. No, Helen, I have never been to Philadelphia in my life.

Source: http://www.news.myanmaronlinecentre.com/2014/05/25/dot-takes-a-hint-from-burma-shave/