New Brunswick…The Drive Through Province? We Need Some Roadside Personality!!!
Okay, seriously, what is up with New Brunswick and its pathological roadside sign phobia anyway? The province would dearly appreciate, and could seriously use, more tourism dollars…or so it says… but it sure as heck doesn’t want to tell anyone how to get to where they want to go…Or tell anyone anything about where they are once they get there!
The completion of the Trans-Canada twinning project has made traveling through the province much safer and faster, but it has also turned it into a complete visual and cultural wasteland. Because of the D.O.T.’s rules, regulations and downright fetish for minimalist signage, travelers and indeed many residents never quite know where they are or know what they might be missing in all the villages and towns the highway bypasses.
I submit to you that it’s time to promote local businesses and let some personality and culture shine through on our highway signs!
Apparently the main reason we don’t have informative highway signs is because the D.O.T is convinced we will all crash and burn if we read a highway billboard or two. Frankly, I think it’s a lot more likely that drivers are going to doze off due to lack of stimulation, or, alternatively, get into a smash-up because they don’t know where the heck they are!
During the years I operated a restaurant in Perth-Andover many tourists commented on this dearth of informative highway signage. They managed to find my pub only because Perth was one of the few small communities that the new highway still runs right through, we are not lost off in the forest which has been the misfortune suffered by so many other small burgs. Plenty of my tourist patrons told me that we ought to call NB “The Drive Through Province” …a comment that should strike mortal terror into the hearts of our tourism council.
Charles Kuralt wrote, some years back, that “the interstate highways now allow you to drive coast to coast without seeing anything.”
And that’s the case in New Brunswick today.
I know a lady isn’t supposed to tell her age, but I have been kicking around on the planet long enough to have seen some of the marvelous and clever “Burma Shave” signs when I was a kid. A young kid, of course! Burma Shave was a new-fangled invention as one of the first brushless shaving creams back in the 1920’s. Sales for the product took off when the company began their roadside sign campaign. On four to six signs in a row, with space enough between to read the signs, a poem or ditty was written. Some were saucy:
He’s the guy…
the girls forgot…
tho’ he was smooth…
his face was not” or
Dinah doesn’t…
treat him right…
but if he’d…
shave…
Dyna-mite!
Some warned drivers not to drink & drive:
Drinking drivers…
nothing worse…they put…
the quart…
before the hearse and how about
Car in ditch…
man in tree…
moon was full…
so was he.
And some of the funniest warned you to keep your attention, that is, your hands and eyes, on what you were doing, you know, driving!
If hugging on highways…
is your sport…
trade in your car…
for a davenport or how about
A nut at the wheel…
a peach on his right…
a curve in the road…
fruit salad that night.
These signs were part of the entertainment of a road trip all through the fifties, but as cars got faster and the interstate highway system grew the last Burma Shave signs went up in 1963, although existing signs lasted for years.
Another highway sign campaign that is still going strong is for the roadside tourist trap in South Carolina called “South of the Border.” This place is kitschy and tacky beyond belief and exists purely to siphon off your money, but the 200 miles of 175 funny billboards leading up to it make the darn place completely irresistible. “Pedro’s Weather Report…Chile Today…Hot Tamale” I mean, how can you not want to stop?
And travelers have been stopping in droves for over 60 years. Some 500 couples have even been married there!
Kitsch sells. Personality that shines is alluring. It appeals to the child in all of us. A correlation to this is the eternal attraction of “Big Stuff” like the Shediac Lobster or tiny little Plaster Rock’s giant carved fiddlehead sculpture.
The D.O.T approved signs that travelers along the Trans-Canada are treated to are sterile, uniform, tiny and minimally informative logos depicting various services. They are boring as hell and give no clue whatsoever as to what you will find beyond the little fork & knife for food or a bed for lodging. Tired travelers want to know what kind of restaurants and lodging they will find, but the government only approves signs that tell you as little as possible. Let’s let it be a surprise the travelers!
This is all part of a bigger, insidious plot to turn the world into a boring, sterile corporate landscape that hypnotizes us into believing that this is actual life.
Personally, I want fun and creative freedom in my life and I want to see some beautiful signs springing up in our province! The government and the D.O.T. needs to support independent business people by allowing, heck, encouraging, great signs on our highways!
