This girl on the billboard is no longer welcome

Here’s a story from the Edwardsville (Ill.) Intelligencer:

A bright pink billboard advertising the Hustler Club and featuring a scantily clad woman that was posted on Frontage Road north of Hamel, and adjacent to Interstate 55, has been removed, according to the farmer on whose property it was placed.

“I didn’t want no part of it,” the farmer, who did not want to be named, said. “Especially when it was a quarter mile from a school and a church.”

He said the billboard went up on Friday afternoon, Aug. 22, and on Monday morning, he called CBS the parent company of Viacom, owner of the billboard, to ask that it be removed.

He said the principal and the pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran School and Church also called and asked for it to be removed.

“A bunch of us called,” he said.

The billboard is located in a strategic spot along old Route 66, renamed Frontage Road after I-55 replaced it, and just a few miles north of Exit 6 off Interstate 64 the exit noted on the billboard.

“They were very apologetic and said it would not happen again,” the farmer who leases the space to Viacom said Friday afternoon. “It was taken down before 10:15 this morning.”

I haven’t seen the billboard, nor is there a photo of it with the article. However, it at least somewhat matches the billboard of “the girl wearing nothing but a smile and a towel” in Del Reeves‘ big hit from 1965, “Girl on the Billboard.”

The song’s co-writer says it was inspired by a Coca-Cola billboard he saw in Nashville. But a number of of readers claim that such a billboard existed on Route 66 decades ago. Alas, that hasn’t been verified.

Second, the St. Paul Lutheran Church in Hamel mentioned in the article has been a longtime landmark for Route 66 travelers, mostly because of its neon cross.