BILL CHERRY'S GREATEST DALLAS PARK CITIES REAL ESTATE BLOG: June 2007

BURMA SHAVE AND MY FRIEND WILL CARTER

                                                                                                     

 

                                                     BURMA SHAVE AND MY FRIEND WILL CARTER

                                                              By Bill Cherry, Dallas Broker-Realtor

                                                                    My 43rd Year Selling Texas

                                                      Meet me on the web at www.billcherrybroker.com

 

If you're old enough to remember World War II, and your daddy had a car that he wasn't afraid to take out on the two lane highway to Grandma's house in Louisiana, you remember the Burma Shave signs.

They were a set of three single signs stuck in the ground along the highway, two of which made up a clever poetic couplet.  The third always said, "BurmaShave." Here's one:

DON'T STICK YOUR  ELBOW OUT SO FAR
IT MAY GO HOME IN ANOTHER  CAR.

BURMASHAVE

You get the idea. 

Well, my friend Will Carter grew up in Dallas' Oak Cliff and his daddy had a sign painting shop.  Trying to make all of the money he could, Will's daddy submitted the bid with Burma Shave to paint and install all of their highway signs in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas. 

So while the boys were at school, Mrs. Carter cut the wood panels for the signs and painted the background color on them.  Then Mr. Carter would hand letter the clever sayings on them.  When the boys got home from school, they would put the poles on them.  About once a week or so, they would load up the old truck and start down a farm to market road or a highway installing the signs.

When Will died a few years ago, he died suddenly.  And Will had made it quite clear to his family that he wasn't sure he believed in God or the Hereafter.  They figured he haunt them if they got a minister to do his funeral.  But they were pretty sure Will would approve of me doing it.  And they thought he would like for me to play the piano -- popular music, not hymns -- while the guests arrived.

So that's what I did, and then I told about Will.  But I knew Will knew me to be a very devout Christian...an Episcopalian, and I decided that I couldn't just let him have his way on this.  So, I did read the Episcopal burial service, then all of the morners joined me in saying the "Lord's Prayer."  I'm confident Will now knows The Truth, has accepted it, his sins have been forgiven, and he's There.

Here are some Burma Shave signs of the past, compliments of my high school coach, Richard Schiebel:

TRAINS  DON'T WANDER ALL OVER THE MAP
CAUSE NOBODY SITS IN THE  ENGINEER'S LAP

BurmaShave

SHE   KISSED THE HAIRBRUSH BY MISTAKE
SHE THOUGHT IT WAS HER  HUSBAND JAKE

BurmaShave

DON'T  LOSE YOUR HEAD TO GAIN A  MINUTE
YOU NEED YOUR HEAD YOUR  BRAINS ARE IN IT

BurmaShave

DROVE  TOO LONG DRIVER SNOOZING
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT IS NOT  AMUSING

BurmaShave

BROTHER  SPEEDER LET'S REHEARSE
ALL TOGETHER GOOD MORNING,  NURSE

BurmaShave

CAUTIOUS  RIDER TO HER  RECKLESS DEAR
LET'S HAVE LESS BULL AND  MORE STEER

BurmaShave

SPEED  WAS HIGH WEATHER WAS NOT
TIRES WERE THIN X MARKS THE   SPOT

BurmaShave

THE  MIDNIGHT RIDE OF PAUL FOR BEER
LED TO A  WARMER HEMISPHERE

BurmaShave

AROUND  THE CURVE LICKETY-SPLIT
BEAUTIFUL CAR WASN'T  IT?

Burma Shave

NO   MATTER THE PRICE NO MATTER HOW NEW
THE BEST SAFETY DEVICE IN  THE CAR IS YOU

BurmaShave

A  GUY WHO DRIVES A CAR WIDE OPEN
IS NOT THINKIN' HE'S JUST  HOPIN'

BurmaShave

AT  INTERSECTIONS LOOK EACH  WAY
A HARP SOUNDS NICE BUT IT'S  HARD TO PLAY

BurmaShave

BOTH   HANDS ON THE WHEEL EYES ON THE ROAD
THAT'S THE  SKILLFUL DRIVER'S  CODE

BurmaShave

THE  ONE WHO DRIVES WHEN HE'S BEEN  DRINKING
DEPENDS ON  YOU TO DO HIS THINKING

BurmaShave

CAR  IN  DITCH DRIVER IN TREE
THE MOON WAS FULL AND SO WAS  HE.

BurmaShave

PASSING  SCHOOL ZONE TAKE IT 
SLOW LET OUR LITTLE SHAVERS  GROW

BurmaShave

                                Meet me on the web at www.billcherrybroker.com



2 comments • BILL CHERRY • June 04 2007 09:36PM

DALLAS' GORDON MC LENDON, THE FLAG POLE SITTER, AND HOUSTON'S GULF FREEWAY

  

KLIF & KILT'S GORDON MC LENDON, THE FLAG POLE SITTER & HOUSTON'S GULF FREEWAY

By BIll Cherry

DALLAS BROKER-REALTOR

MY 43RD YEAR SERVING TEXANS

MEET ME ON THE WEB AT http://www.billcherrybroker.com/

While Galveston and Houston have always been rivals, there has never been a time when wisdom didn't show it to both cities' best interest to work together.

When construction on an electric railway was begun March 28, 1910, to connect the two cities, Galveston had a population of about 40,000.  Houston was just twice as big.

The new electric train was called the Interurban, a made up word, and it was built in just one year, and that included laying the tracks and building the large plants that generated the electricity that fueled it.  The cars, much like trolleys, ran down a single track for just over 50 miles, and at a speed of 60 miles per hour.  They hauled passengers and freight from downtown Galveston to Houston and back until October 31, 1936.

"Galveston's historic Interurban line between Houston and Galveston, once the fastest in the nation, gave away last night to the march of time, and ceased operation after 25 years of almost continuous service," The Galveston Daily News said the next morning.

Just three years later, the Houston Electric Co. that owned and operated Houston's downtown streetcar system shut down.  Because the Interurban shared some of its tracks in Houston-proper, through some intercompany trade-out, Houston Electric ended up owning a major portion of the Interurban's right-of-way that connected Galveston with Houston.  To be allowed to shut down, Houston Electric was legally responsible by their contract for removing the tracks.

Houston's Mayor Oscar Holcombe told Houston Electric that rather than pull them up, a task that would be extremely costly, he would let them just pave over them if they would donate the right-of-way to the city.  The deal was cut.

Holcombe said in 1952, "I felt sure we would be able to use that right-of-way, and equally confident that someday a major, multilane highway would be constructed there." When the state opened the first section of the proposed super highway connecting Houston and Galveston in 1948, it was built on that right-of way.  

The first business on the highway opened up a few days later.  It was a service station.  When the owner applied for mail service, the highway had no name.  The postmaster called Mayor Holcombe and told him the road needed to be formally named.  A contest was quickly put together, and Sally Yancey, a Houston bank clerk, won a hundred bucks for naming it, "the Gulf Freeway."

The Gulf Freeway was officially proclaimed completed in 1952.  Four years later, Houston's first enclosed shopping mall opened.  Called Gulfgate, it was anchored by Sakowitz's and Joske's.  Galveston's E.S. Levy's also had a store there. 

The following year, Dallas' Gordon McLendon, the radioman who stole broadcasting from network stations with his Top 40 format and personality disc jockeys, bought back Houston's KLBS, an AM radio station he had previously owned.  To build interest in the new format he planned for it, he had a disc jockey lock himself in the shack at the station's transmitter and play nothing but Ray Anthony's "Dragnet" for several days before the call letters were changed to KILT and the new Top 40 was introduced.

And then with the salvaged frame of an oil derrick he had put on the corner of the Gulfgate parking lot, Don Keyes become a flagpole sitter, attempting to break the world record for KILT.

Keyes was not just some silly DJ trying to make a name for himself.  He was McLendon's right hand man in the development of the Top 40 concept from the very beginning, and he had personally come to Houston from Dallas' KLIF to put KILT on the air and win over the market.
.
The personality disc jockeys that opened KILT included Joel A. Spivak, Red Jones, Bob White, Leaping Lee Perkins and Bill Slater.  Shortly thereafter, legend Rascal McCaskill joined as the host of the all night show, "Milkman's Matinee," and a few years later one of the now most noted names in Top 40  radio, Chuck Dunaway was brought in to take over a shift and pump up and stabilize the numbers.  Under the name, Van Anders, Galveston's Vandy Anderson did news there for awhile.

As unusual as it may seem today, driving to see the KILT flagpole sitter did more to get people from Galveston County to have their first experience with the new freeway and the enclosed shopping mall than any of the advertising and promotions the stores and the mall owners had done.

So with the opening of the Gulf Freeway, Gulfgate and the KILT flagpole sitter working congruently, traffic began building faster than anyone had predicted.  The highway department built a crude, tripod duck blind looking affair and moved it up and down the freeway from Gulfgate to the Galveston causeway.  It kept two employees on top of the thing to take photos of the traffic. 

Several places along the way, they constructed traffic counter mechanisms that were attached to thermometer-looking signs.  This was for public relations purposes, to show everyone how popular the new roadway was.

                                                

But it was those fellows taking photos from atop the tripod and the traffic count thermometers that were the basis for 100% of the research that the highway engineers used to remold sections of the roadway over the next twenty years.  No one had dreamed up a scientific methodology.

The advent of Top 40 in Houston; Don Keyes, the flagpole sitter; and the Gulf Freeway being set on top of the old Interurban right-of-way did more to get Galvestonians to explore the world off of the island than anything had before or has since.

And McLendon's KILT, with its zany disc jockeys, fast paced and tight programming, station ID jingles, listener contests and rhythm and blues music, moved teenagers into a dimensions that no way resembles that of the teens of the past.

Copyright 2004 - William S. Cherry

MEET ME ON THE WEB AT WWW.BILLCHERRYBROKER.COM

Read Bill Cherry's Monthly Texas Stories at www.texasescapes.com

 

 

0 comments • BILL CHERRY • June 04 2007 08:55PM

BROKER JASPER, CASPER THE GHOST & THE LAS VEGAS SHOW GIRLS MEET TO DISCUSS BROKERING REAL ESTATE

 

                                                   

                                                                JASPER, HIS MOUSTACHE, GLASSES &

                                                                          THE LAS VEGAS SHOW GIRLS

                                                     (AFTER GIVING THEM HIS FAMOUS BUSINESS CARD)

About twenty-five years ago, my childhood friend Jasper Tramonte stopped in to see me one day.  He had been working in computer programming and as a corporate efficiency expert for a long time by then.  But that had taken him into northern climates, and we Galvestonians just can't seem to get past having the Gulf of Mexico to look at, and the smell of sand, sea and Coppertone-oiled girls in bikinis.  And a drop in temperature to 60 degrees isn't our idea of a good day.

So Jasper said he and his wife Carol and their son who is now Dr. Jeff wanted to move back to the gulf coast. He was going to try his hand at commercial real estate brokerage.  "What advice do you have for your old friend?" he asked.

The answer was not new and was totally academic.  "Real estate is a business of numbers.  Talk to enough people and talk to them often enough, and you'll do well.  That's rule number one.  And rule number two is to market yourself so that you stand apart from your competition and people remember you and think of you first," I offered.

So Jasper did two things in the marketing department.  First, he had a logo developed that was the cartoon character Casper the Ghost, but with a bushy moustache and big black-rimmed glasses like Jasper wears,  And he put Jasper the Ghost on everything.  Even had cuff links made with it.  And don't forget the Jasper the Ghost tie tack.  And he even tried to get his nurse wife Carol to wear a gold one as a pin.  ("No soap," she said.)

And his Casper the Ghost business cards got passed out to nearby tables in every restaurant he ate in, and to people standing in line at the movie with him, all waiting to buy tickets, and once every two weeks to his barber for more than twenty-five years.  And the barber is still getting them.

And second, Jasper developed a Christmas card.  Now this Christmas card is a big fold our affair and in cartoon caricature style, he has a Christmas scene where every one of his clients is shown at the party.  And just in case you don't know or recognize them, their names are by their pictures.  I've often thought some people use Jasper's services just so they can be on the Christmas card.  And let me add that once you're on the card, you're on every one after that for life.  There are hundreds of faces on these things.  Tires me out to look at them, but nevertheless I do every Christmas season as soon as the mailman delivers it.  Guarantee you everyone else does, too.  And I'll bet he mails out thousands of them.  He won't tell me.  Big secret for some reason. 

You can use Jasper's broad marketing ideas in your business.  They're winners.  And if you're looking for a great commercial broker in the Houston-Galveston area, I'd recommend Jasper E. Tramonte, 17300 El Camino Real, Suite 110, Houston 77058.  281 488-8474.  We've been great friends for sixty years.  Once even worked as magicians -- the Twin Foondinis -- but that's another story.

BILL CHERRY, DALLAS BROKER-REALTOR. MY 43RD YEAR SELLING TEXAS 972 380-7347

                                    MEET ME ON THE NET AT WWW.BILLCHERRYBROKER.COM

                             

3 comments • BILL CHERRY • June 01 2007 09:29AM