Jun 7, 2016 4 min read

As we made our way across central Pennsylvania last weekend, my companion and I didn’t listen to the radio or CDs. Rather, we talked, entertaining ageless questions:

“What do those orange balls on power lines do?” (They warn away low-flying aircraft.)

“What did Kubla Khan decree in Xanadu?” (A stately pleasure dome.)

“Why did Samuel Taylor Coleridge need 143 verses to get to the point in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”? (He was on a really long car trip.)

I admit that the last two questions – each regarding a Coleridge poem – came up because we are both writers. But we weren’t always.

When I was a kid, my family drove once a year to Kalamazoo, Mich., to see my grandparents. It was a boring trek at 50 mph along the Pennsylvania and Ohio turnpikes. Still, it seemed exotic to someone whose main car trips were 15-minute rides to church. Near Kalamazoo, on back roads, we passed through Battle Creek, Mich., home to the Kellogg cereal company, where – despite straining my ears – the only snaps, crackles and pops I could discern came from my mom’s girdle.

The cars my dad could afford didn’t have air conditioning, so windows were down except in the event of rain. Kids, I can testify that there is no experience quite like being trapped, with windows lowered, behind a cattle truck in a tunnel in mid-summer. AM radio in the Buckeye State was crammed with what my mom called “hillbilly music” and paeans to Mack trucks. So we were forced to entertain ourselves for almost eight hours.

Mom liked to play “Riddle Dee Dee,” a version of what some call “I Spy.” It went like this:

“Riddle dee dee, riddle dee dee, I see something you don’t see …”

At which point the other player was permitted to ask three questions, such as, “Is it in the car?”; “Is it moving?”; and “Does it make a sound?” In this example, if Mom answered “Yes” to question one, but “No” to questions two and three, the answer to her riddle was “Dad.”

Most often, however, the things she spied were cows, grass, barns and Howard Johnsons restaurants. Burma-Shave signs broke the monotony.

America lost much when Burma-Shave jingles stopped appearing along the sides of highways in 1963. They’d been around since 1927, when the Burma-Vita Co. thought up the idea of advertising its brushless shaving cream using roadside signs. Not billboards, but a series of six small signs, the first five containing a snippet of verse, the last always proclaiming “Burma-Shave!”

Some examples:

Don’t take / A curve / At 60 per / We hate to lose / A customer / Burma-Shave!

He lit a match / To check gas-tank / That’s why they call him / Skinless Frank / Burma-Shave!

You’ll have to admit that, as roadside distractions, these far outstrip “Live Nude Girls.” Admittedly better than “Dead Nude Girls,” but …

You needn’t be steeped in poetry to have fun with words while driving. May I suggest that you try to complete famous proverbs? That’s the task some British schoolchildren faced recently. The mother of one child posted her daughter’s sometimes hilarious answers on Reddit.

To complete, “People in glass houses …” the girl wrote “are rich.”

“Don’t count your chickens …” “because they need privacy.”

“It’s all fun and games until …” “Darth Vader comes.”

Classic stuff. And she didn’t need 143 verses or mention an albatross.

Here’s a proverb from this side of the pond: “A fool and his money …” “might soon be elected president.”

Even though the popularity of rap music today might produce roadside rhymes something like this:

You be drivin’ / While you textin’ / And the graveyard / You be next in —

I missed seeing Burma-Shave signs last weekend.

After you’re no longer a teenager, the aphrodisiac powers of “Padiddle” mysteriously wane.