(Publisher’s note: These were originally two stories on Forward Kentucky. I’m posting both, one after another, so you can get the full story. And cobbler!)
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These western KY Dems are ‘signing up’ to Ditch Mitch and Dump Trump
Gene Nettles, 78, and Leslie McColgin, 65, got a kick out of Burma-Shave signs when they were kids.
So the devout Democrats are reprising the old-time roadside rhyming signs in deepest western Kentucky to help retire Sen. Mitch McConnell.
“It’s time for Mitch to go! go! go! like Marvin K. Mooney in Dr. Seuss,” McColgin said.
Nettles’ signs diss Donald Trump, too. “I fear for the future of our republic while led by Trump and McConnell,” said Nettles, a no-nonsense ex-Army paratrooper who lives in Fulton County close to the Tennessee state line. “My friends and all others who have given the last full measure for our nation are surely rolling in their graves at the path of dishonor, division, and ceding world leadership wrought by this less than dynamic duo.”
Long gone, the familiar red-and-white Burma-Shave signs were an advertising gimmick for hawking brushless shaving cream. They featured short, funny poems posted on a sequence of little wooden signs along roadways.
Nettles skipped the versifying. He didn’t mince words in his quintet of plastic signs aimed at the Republican president and Senate majority leader: “SAVE,” “NATION,” “DITCH,” “MITCH,” “DUMP TRUMP.” They’re white with black letters.
McColgin, a retired speech-language therapist who resides near Lowes in Graves County, opted for real Burma-Shave retro. Her signs are red, wooden and hand-painted with white letters like the originals.
She composed two sets of signs. The first looks like this:
McGrath, a retired Marine jet pilot, is the Democrat who wants McConnell’s job.
“A little humor goes a long way in politics,” said McColgin, a co-leader of Four Rivers Indivisible, a local branch of the national Indivisible grassroots activist organization.
Her second series looks like this:
Many, if not most, younger Kentuckians probably have never heard of Burma-Shave or the company’s storied signs.
“I remember seeing them all over the country, especially in the southeastern states,” said Nettles. The son of a soldier, Nettles spent 20 years jumping out of airplanes. He fought in Vietnam and made lieutenant colonel after serving 20 years in Army green.
McColgin and Nettles said they got the idea for Burma-Shave-style signs in weekly Zoom meetings for Jackson Purchase Democratic activists. The teleconferences are hosted by Mary Potter, a Clinton attorney and editor of the West Kentucky Journal online.
Potter plans to compose and put up her own signs closer to election day.
Nettles is shooting for mid-August. “I expect the hay to be mowed after the first of the month, and the fifteenth is my target date.”
McColgin ran the idea past her Indivisible group. “Everybody decided to kick off our ‘100 Days to the Election Unity Week’ on Monday ,” she said. “Lea Wentworth of Paducah, another group leader, has had fun painting the signs.”
“My husband, George Kennedy, has vivid memories of the real Burma Shave signs when his family would drive in upstate New York in the summer,” McColgin said.
All but one of McColgin’s signs will be on property she and her spouse own on Lowes and Shaw roads, which border their property.
The other sign is on a neighbor’s land. A retired union electrician, he eagerly agreed to have it erected and volunteered to clear some brush to make the signs more visible.
“And my husband has been motivated even in this heat to go out and clear some trees and brush along one of our fence rows on Lowes Road to improve visibility for the signs,” McColgin said.
Nettles crossed the border to Union City, Tenn., and lined up a print shop to make his signs. He stuck them along his driveway to see how they looked. But they’ll be transplanted to his hay field on Ky highway 125, which fronts Gene and Nancy Nettles’ home.
Neither he nor McColgin are daunted by the fact that in 2014, McConnell carried Fulton and Graves counties by wide margins and that Trump piled up even larger margins going on four years ago.
“I want Mitch to know that he can’t just take Western Kentucky for granted this year,” McColgin said. “There are a lot of people that look at how long he’s been there and are fed up with someone who so obviously is more concerned with playing politics than helping people.”
McColgin said she read that McConnell “actually laughed when asked this past week if he would get a replacement passed for the special Covid-19-related unemployment benefits before the current law expires. Sorry, but the ‘Grim Reaper’ isn’t a joke; these are real people suffering from his inaction.”
It riles Nettles to hear Trump, McConnell, and other Republicans talk as if they’ve cornered the market on patriotism. “Trump is a draft-dodger,” said Nettles who soldiered in the famed 82nd Airborne 101st Airborne (Air Assault) divisions plus the South Vietnamese Airborne Division.
Trump avoided the draft via student deferments and a questionable medical deferment for bone spurs on his heels.
Like many young men with influence, McConnell was able to land a slot in the Army reserve in 1967, when thousands of others, many of them poor and working class whites and minorities, were being drafted and sent to Vietnam. Almost all reserve and National Guard outfits stayed stateside.
McConnell served about four months before he got a medical discharge for an eye ailment–some say dubiously–with help from his mentor Sen. John Sherman Cooper.
Nettles considers McConnell a draft dodger, too.
The Army vet remembers when “the most powerful contingent in Congress was neither the Democratic nor the Republican parties. It was veterans.
“They probably tamped down many of the warrior-wannabes from the civilian side that wanted to use force all the time. I think the veterans were a stabilizing force and said, ‘Hey guys, I’ve been shot at and I know what the hell it’s like. So we don’t need to be sending any more young people to this hell hole or that hell hole.’
“We don’t have that today. There are only a few vets, and I love every one of them, no matter what party. I don’t regard the president as being a patriot. He acts like an agent for Putin.”
McConnell signs were vandalized by persons unknown, but then fixed by conservative neighbors
Looking for creative ways to express their opposition to Senator Mitch McConnell, a small group of Purchase activists brainstormed ideas in an evening zoom meeting.
One idea floated by Fulton Countian Gene Nettles was to replicate the old Burma Shave road signs. The humorous rhymes spread out over several signs were popular on the two lane highways of America in the mid 20thcentury.
Some had nothing to do with the shave cream that sponsored them.
Is he lonesome
Or just blind –
This guy who drives
So close behind?
Burma-Shave
Others were clear on what product they were advertising.
We don’t know how
To split an atom
But as to whiskers
Let us at ’em
Burma-Shave
Several in the group thought the signs were a capital idea.
Getting from idea to completion became the task. Nettles arranged with a printer to have his signs professionally prepared. Leslie McColgin, co-chair of Four Rivers Indivisible, accepted a friend’s offer to make her signs in the colors of the original Burma Shave colors.
The series would run along her home in rural Graves County. A couple of the signs were placed on and near the property of a retired union member.
On Monday, July 27th, the national organization of Indivisible celebrated the countdown of less than 100 days to Election Day in a big way. Four Rivers Indivisible took part.
McColgin and her husband, George, put her signs out on Monday.
Signs vandalized
Here’s what happened on Tuesday in her own words:
So our red “Burma Shave” signs have been vandalized. Neighbors called to tell us. Going out to look now. Said TRUMP and MAGA painted on at least 2 of them.
So our neighbors just sent me these photos. They are, I think, R voters but are upset and she wants to help me try to get it off, offered paint thinner.
It’s raining now, think I’ll wait. Plus let people see the ugliness.
Signs repaired by neighbors
Then on Wednesday, McColgin posted on Facebook:
My neighbors that sent me the pictures offered to help fix them, and I was waiting to hear from them about when, after a rain, and making potato salad. They texted me new pictures and said “It’s all fixed, not quite as good as new but the paint is gone!”
Seems she and her husband went out with some paint thinner and sponges and cleaned them up, and my neighbor, George Womble, who has one sign on his property and one near it on the steep bank saw them and came out and helped them. Since the spray paint was fresh, it had not set yet.
My poor neighbor did not realize the steepness of the bank and of course it was muddy and she slipped and had to sit down. She said she worried about her dress coming up and her underwear showing.
She said two cars stopped and offered to help her. I would have told her not to even try. I’ve been on that bank putting the sign up and it’s dangerous for folks our age.
So it turned into a neighborly help-fest, and she said they were glad to make the acquaintance of neighbor George Womble as they had not met him before.
So – just need to fix the “i” with some white paint or white out; which I had the other day when I touched up something on one of the signs but can’t find now.
And I took my neighbors some of that potato salad, and half the fresh blackberry cobbler I made for Donnie and some of the homemade ice cream I just made for that too. Good neighbors, good conversation. And I will point out that we are total opposites politically, and they label themselves “very conservative Christians”; hair in a bun, long dresses etc.
As someone posted on McColgin’s Facebook page, it’s a long time to the election and the chances of more vandalism remain high. That’s a fact.
It’s also a fact that good neighbors remain good neighbors.
Even during a tumultuous political season.
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The first story was written by Berry Craig and posted on Forward Kentucky. The second was written by Mary Potter in the West Kentucky Journal, and cross-posted on Forward Kentucky.
And, if you want to donate to Four Rivers Indivisible to support all the other things they are doing (like their Mitch billboard, as discussed in the comments), you can donate at their ActBlue page.
