Mail Pouches Tobacco shops still have a nostalgic feel on the country roads of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other nearby states.
They offer both beautiful American folk art and unforgettable memories of rural America that lasted well into the 20th century.
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This ancient empire ad was not generated by computer graphics. Instead, local artists painted the pictures by hand.
This work helped make Harley E. Warrick, a World War II veteran and survivor of the frigid and bloody Battle of the Bulge, of Ohio, a national hero in his later years.
Harley E. Warwick served in the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II. He spent the rest of his life after the war painting barnside advertisements for the Mail Pouch Tobacco Company in Wheeling, West Virginia. They are now recognized as classic American folk art. (Courtesy of Roger Warrick)
He was the only artist to paint the Mail Pouch Tobacco sign.
“He was the last of a dying art form,” his Kentucky-based son Roger Warrick told Fox News Digital.
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Block Brothers Tobacco Company, which sold mail pouches, was established in Wheeling, West Virginia., In 1879.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 1950 there were nearly 6 million farms nationwide. That number has now fallen to 1.9 million.
Rural roadside barns were the mass marketing medium of this era. It provided a natural sign.
1980s mail pouch chewing tobacco advertising sign painted on the side of a barn, 1891-1992, mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states of the United States (K Vreeland/Classicstock/Getty Images)
The mail porch’s “advertising gimmick began in 1891, and the last barn was painted in 1992,” the Athens (Ohio) Messenger reported in 2021.
“At its peak, there were about 20,000 painted barns on country roads across the country, most of them in the Midwest.”
“He was the last of a dying breed of art form.”
Mr. Warrick, who grew up on a farm in Ohio, returned from World War II in 1946 and almost immediately joined a crew painting advertisements for Mail Pouch cigarettes, his son said.
The former GI was still in his 20s. a lot of work.
Farmers were paid a nominal fee to use their barns as signage. But more importantly, they received a new paint job every year.
Harley Warrick of Ohio participated in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. He spent the rest of his life after the war enjoying the quiet solitude of painting “mail bag tobacco” around Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. (Courtesy of Roger Warrick)
“Warrick and his partner traveled together, sometimes sleeping in pickup trucks or in the back of cheap motels,” Ohio author Fred Hendricks wrote in the agricultural news outlet Fence Post last year.
“I don’t paint barns, I paint signs on barns,” the “salty” and “pipe-smoking” Warwick retorted when asked about his job, according to Hendricks.
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Warrick began working with the crew, his son said. However, for most of his career he worked and traveled alone, often leaving home on Monday and returning on Thursday.
Apparently, the artist found this quiet, solitary work to be cathartic after experiencing the horrors of military life and war.
“He became his own boss,” says artist Roger Warrick.
September 4, 2023 A faded mail pouch cigarette advertisement in rural Layton, New Jersey. (Kelly J. Byrne/Fox News Digital)
“I think he just wanted to do his own thing after being ordered up in the military. He was a loner. He set his own hours. People generally didn’t like him. I left it alone.”
According to his son, the GIs rarely talked about his wartime service.
But when his family complained about the cold, he would mention Europe’s notoriously frigid winter of 1944-1945.
“I think he just wanted to do his own thing after being ordered up in the Army.”
Warwick served in the 99th Infantry Division during World War II. The unit earned heroic honors for its determined defense against a German onslaught at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.
Approximately 3,000 GIs in the unit (1 in 5 soldiers) were killed, wounded, or frostbitten in combat.
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The 99th Regiment crossed the Rhine in March 1945, just before the collapse of the famous Remagen Bridge.
The unit liberated Dachau concentration camp and fought deep into Bavaria by the end of the war in 1945.
Artist and World War II veteran Harley Warrick achieved fame late in life by painting mail porch tobacco barn signs. (Courtesy of Roger Warwick)
“He saw some things in the war, but he didn’t talk much about it,” Roger Warrick said. “Just the light stuff. I always knew there was more to it than that.”
No matter what horrors Harley Warrick saw, suffered, or did, he spent most of his post-war life in sunny solitude, in the peace and quiet of American farmland. So I continued to draw pictures by myself.
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Although he died in 2000, his status as the last man to paint the Mail Porch Tobacco sign has earned him local and national recognition, including a segment on “On the Road” with journalist Charles Kuralt. It brought a lot of notoriety.
“He became an overnight sensation,” his son said.
“It took him 50 years to get there.”
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