Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ico,bloatedbutlookingstrangely serene.Theriverisdeceptively fierce.In1927,whenthe
Mississippi overflowed, it flooded an area the size of Scotland. That is a serious river.
On the Kentucky side of the river I was greeted by huge signs everywhere saying,
FIREWORKS! In Illinois fireworks are illegal; in Kentucky they are not. So if you live in
Illinois and want to blow your hand off, you drive across the river to Kentucky. You used
to see a lot more of this sort of thing. If one state had a lower sales tax on cigarettes than a
neighboringstate, allthestate-line gasstations andcafeswouldputbigsignsontheirroofs
saying, TAX-FREE CIGARETTES! 40 CENTS A PACK! No TAX! and all the people
from the next state would come and load their cars up with cut-price cigarettes. Wisconsin
used to ban margarine to protect its dairy farmers, so everybody in Wisconsin, including
all the dairy farmers, would drive to Iowa where there were big signs everywhere saying,
MARGARINE FOR SALE! All the Iowans, in the meantime, were driving off to Illinois,
where there was no sales tax on anything, or Missouri, where the sales tax on gasoline was
50 percent lower. The other thing you used to get a lot of was states going their own way
in terms of daylight saving time, so in the summer Illinois might be two hours adrift from
Iowa and one hour behind Indiana. It was all kind of crazy, but it made you realize to what
an extent the United States is really fifty independent countries (forty eight countries in
those days). Most of that seems to have gone now, yet another sad loss.
IdrovethroughKentuckythinkingofsadlossesandwasabruptlystruckbythesaddestloss
ofall-theBurmaShavesign.BurmaShavewasashavingcreamthatcameinatube.Idon't
know if it's still produced. In fact, I never knew anyone who ever used it. But the Burma
Shave company used to put clever signs along the highway. They came in clusters of five,
expertly spaced so that you read them as a little poem as you passed: IF HARMONY / IS
WHATYOUCRAVE /THEN GET /ATUBA BURMA SHAVE.Or: BEN MET ANNA/
MADE A HIT / NEGLECTED BEARD I BEN-ANNA SPLIT / BURMA SHAVE. Great,
eh? Even in the 1950s the Burma Shave signs were pretty much a thing of the past. I can
remember seeing only half a dozen in all the thousands of miles of highway we covered.
But as roadside diversions went they were outstanding, ten times better than billboards and
Pella's little twirling windmills. The only things that surpassed them for diversion value
were multiple-car pileups with bodies strewn about the highway.
Kentucky was much like southern Illinois-hilly, sunny, attractive-but the scattered houses
were less tidy and prosperouslooking than in the North. There were lots of wooded valleys
andironbridgesovertwistingcreeks,andanabundanceofdeadanimalspastedtotheroad.
In every valley stood a little white Baptist church and all along the road were signs to re-
mind me that I was now in the Bible Belt: JESUS SAVES. PRAISE THE LORD. CHRIST
IS KING.
