Modern Burma Shave

It was, back in the day, prosaic poetry: Shave the modern way / No brush / No lather / No rub-in / Big tube 35 cents – Drug stores / Burma-Shave

I'm too young (really, by this measure I'm young!) to recall the Burma Shave signs along the highways, teasing out a line at a time. The signs came down in 1963, around the time I learned to read. When on a sabbatical leave in 1998 (in which we drove and camped our way across the country with a two year old and four year old in tow, in the days before video displays in cars or handheld tablets, but thankfully after recorded books) we encountered a similar set of signs for Wall Drugs on I-90 as we headed to the Badlands.  

But Burma Shave has been reimagined on the Pennsy Trail in Haverford, where pages from Sheep Take a Hike by Nancy Shaw tease you down the path and back. And if you tire midway through, there's bench and some books to take a break with.

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The camping in the Badlands was memorable. There were a whole series of thunderstorms the night we camped there. Crash woke me to tell me his sleeping bag was wet, and it was because there was a stream running through the tent. We hung stuff up to dry in the morning, drove to get breakfast at the diner near the entrance, but didn't get back until the next storm struck. We decamped in a deluging rain storm, the kids tucked up and dry in the minivan while a sopping wet Math Man and I loaded up our gear.

We stopped in the first small town we came to, and found a laundromat. Then we went to Wall Drugs. My memories of Wall Drug are misty, but I can still see the lemon yellow walls of that wonderful laundromat. Dry sleeping bags are a wonderful thing, right up there with dry socks.