For anyone driving through the American countryside before 1963 there was a good chance they’d see a series of six signs spaced along the side of the road written to entertain and promote the sale of Burma Shave “brushless” shaving cream. Here’s one of the last set of signs from 53 years ago:

We don’t

Know how

To split an atom

But as to whiskers

Let us at ’em

Burma Shave

The Burma-Vita company’s original product was a liniment made of ingredients described as having come from “The Malay Peninsula and Burma.” Sales were poor until the company hit upon the road sign advertising gimmick, and at its peak, Burma-Shave was the second-highest-selling brushless shaving cream in the United States. But now those quaint little signs of Americana are as dead as Dodo Birds.

You can find examples of them by Googling around the web, and you can find pictures of Dodo birds too if you want. But you won’t find either one of them in their “natural habitat.” They’re gone. As Monty Python would say, they’ve “kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the choir invisible.” They are extinct.