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Once on barns across the countryside, now only a few are left. Local man paints thousands on U.S. roadsides
By Jim Carney
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Friday, Jul 04, 2008
Drive south on Cleveland-Massillon Road toward Clinton, and you might notice a barn on the east side of the highway just north of the village.
It can be hard to spot, and the sign that was painted on it probably decades ago is slowly weathering away.
''Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco'' are the only words that can be read.
The rest — ''Treat Yourself to the Best'' — are too faint to make out.
This building seems symbolic of so many Mail Pouch barns: It's slowly fading into the past.
Once common sights along rural highways, Mail Pouch barns are a reminder of the way things once were in America, and seeing one can bring back a flood of memories.
Perhaps it's of being a child in the back seat of a car, spotting the black or red sign while on the way to your grandparents' house and trying to put meaning to the words. There always seemed to be a Mail Pouch barn just over the horizon on the country roads to Wheeling or Sandusky.
Harley Warrick, a Belmont County resident who died in 2000, painted about 20,000 Mail Pouch signs on about 12,000 barns over 40 to 50 years.
Just try to find one now.
The Mail Pouch barn on Greenwich Road in Seville stands out like a painting against a deep blue summer sky as you approach it from the east.
But if you want to see the sign on this 115-year-old Medina County barn, you will have to do it soon.
Michele Scarberry, owner of Lindesfarne Kennel, which is housed in the barn's first floor, said she and her husband, Mark, plan to put new siding on the building in August to lessen weather damage.
The Scarberrys board and train all types of dogs and breed German shepherds. Their barn also houses Buckeye K9 Academy, where police dogs are trained.
Because of the gaps in the old siding, Michelle Scarberry said, rain, snow and ice get into the building.
''It ruins the inside of the barn,'' she said.
Two signs
Dick Graber isn't sure how old his Mail Pouch barn is.
The 67-year-old, who runs a roof repair business, bought the barn — as well as the house and 2.5 acres that go with it — last fall.
The property is in Wayne County's East Union Township, east of Wooster on East Lincoln Way, the old Lincoln Highway.
There are Mail Pouch signs on both the north and east sides of the barn.
''To me, it's a tremendous blessing to put stuff in it for storage,'' Graber said of his barn.
An Iowa native, Graber said he never really thought about Mail Pouch barns before buying one of his own.
Occasionally, someone stops by his house to ask permission to photograph the barn, he said, and once someone made him a proposal:
The man said he would give Graber $300 for the entire north side of the barn, Mail Pouch sign and all.
Graber didn't even consider the offer, saying it would cost thousands of dollars to replace the siding.
He's not planning to disturb his two Mail Pouch signs.
''I'm not going to paint'' either sign, he said.
Family heirloom
For as long as Jeff Runser can remember, there has been a Mail Pouch sign on his barn.
Located on state Route 93 in Stark County's Lawrence Township, the barn was part of the property his grandfather, Neal Runser, bought in 1925.
Jeff's father, Carl, later took over the farm, and then in 1974, it was passed to Jeff.
Runser, 62, who works as a food inspector for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, owns 12 acres and still farms the land.
He said the barn must be more than a century old and the Mail Pouch sign was repainted several times when he was growing up.
When he retires in the next few years, Runser hopes to restore the sign.
''It is part of our American heritage, as far as I'm concerned,'' he said.
Among the things in the barn are his grandfather's 1947 Dodge, which he also plans to restore, and a 1950 Allis Chalmers tractor that still runs.
Do it yourself
Ron Teck always wanted a Mail Pouch sign, but was told there was a long waiting list to have his barn painted.
So in the early 1980s, he painted the sign on his barn on Old Forge Road in Portage County's Brimfield Township himself.
He used cardboard boxes to stencil the letters.
Teck, now 59 and a resident of Tallmadge, lived on the property until 1986, when he sold it to Mark Bochert.
Bochert said the story he's been told is that the barn was moved from the Brittain Road area in Akron to Brimfield when Chapel Hill Mall was built in the 1960s.
Teck, an Army Vietnam veteran, said he wanted the Mail Pouch sign because he chewed that brand of tobacco at one time.
When he painted the barn, he did it with a broken leg and a 4-inch brush, ''so it took me quite a while — the better part of a month,'' he said.
Bochert, owner of the Erie Station Grille in Tallmadge and Bochert Excavating, said people stop by occasionally to look at the barn and take pictures of it.
''This is history,'' he said.
Museum nearby
In September 1987, the Twinsburg Historical Society hired Harley Warrick to paint a barn it had been given on state Route 91, just south of state Route 82.
According to a Beacon Journal story at the time by the late columnist Fran Murphey, Warrick took nearly 12 hours to paint the side of the barn with the familiar Mail Pouch logo.
At the bottom left corner of the sign on the Freeman Barn — so called because it was built by Dr. Seth Freeman in 1870 — Warrick painted his initials, ''H.W.,'' along with the date ''87.''
The barn and the museum next to it are open to the public from 2 to 5 p.m. on the last Sunday of every month. The barn also is open by appointment by calling 330-487-5565.
The Warrick story
Harley Warrick's son Roger now lives in Indiana. He said his father started painting Mail Pouch signs in 1946 after returning from the Army.
''They were painting his family's Mail Pouch barn at the time,'' Roger Warrick said, ''so it was just by happenstance that he got into it.''
He said his father, who died in November 2000 at the age of 76, painted his last barn sign in 1992.
Originally, Roger Warrick said, there were four or five two-man crews who went from farm to farm painting the signs in the Midwest. By 1970, Harley was the only one still doing the painting.
Mary Ruth Whorton, assistant to the director of Swisher International, the company that operates the Mail Pouch factory in Wheeling, said the Beautification Act of 1965 controlled outdoor advertising along highways and limited the number of new signs that could be erected.
Warrick, she said, was a free-lancer who was paid per barn by Mail Pouch. The building owners were not charged to have the side of their barns painted and Mail Pouch provided the paint.
The Mail Pouch signs, she said, ''are just a part of history. Of course, it is fading. That is what brings back the curiosity.''
People call to find out whether the company still paints barns, she said, but the company stopped doing that years ago.
''We don't have schematics or anything,'' she said. ''It was all done free-hand.''
Roger Warrick said fascination with the Mail Pouch barns has to do with nostalgia, plain and simple.
''If you're from a certain generation that remembers when the barns were everywhere on country drives,'' he said, ''it serves as a nostalgic reminder of those days gone by.''
Plus, he said, there is the human element of one man painting so many of the barns.
''It really has nothing to do with the actual product being advertised, ironically, since chewing tobacco is not the most popular product anymore,'' he said. ''It is more symbolic of a time gone by.''
Jim Carney can be reached at 330-996-3576 or jcarney@thebeaconjournal.com.
Drive south on Cleveland-Massillon Road toward Clinton, and you might notice a barn on the east side of the highway just north of the village.
Get the full article here.
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