# Signs of Spring, Jim Berryman's 1928 cartoon of the car owner's season

Signs of Spring is a Washington Evening Star cartoon by Jim Berryman dated 11 March 1928. A loaded touring car passes a "To Florida" sign in the center, ringed by four spring mishaps: a boiling radiator, a salesman's "Big Drive" for the "Dissip-8," a family car lacquered "Dawn-Gray," and tops folded back on "Pneumonia" models.

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      Signs of Spring

      Signs of Spring, Jim Berryman's 1928 cartoon of the car owner's season
      Jim Berryman's Signs of Spring (11 March 1928) rings a Florida-bound touring car with four motoring mishaps, from the "Dissip-8" salesman to "Pneumonia"

## Techniques named on the archive record

Euphemism / doublespeak
      DateMarch 11, 1928Made byWashington Evening Star (cartoonist Jim Berryman)MediumCartoonCountryUnited StatesRegimeCoolidge AdministrationNARANAID 5730852; NAID 5743093SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives (NARA), Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (NAID 5730852) , retrieved October 3, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) Jim Berryman, Washington Evening Star. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.S. Senate, 5743093 (NAID 5743093).
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  Signs of Spring is a Washington Evening Star cartoon by Jim Berryman dated 11 March 1928. A loaded touring car passes a "To Florida" sign in the center, ringed by four spring mishaps: a boiling radiator, a salesman's "Big Drive" for the "Dissip-8," a family car lacquered "Dawn-Gray," and tops folded back on "Pneumonia" models.

## Five panels

The cartoon is built as a ring. A round central panel shows a touring car, loaded for a trip, passing a sign that points to Florida. Four panels around it each carry one sign of the season. The captions are the jokes.

WHEN IT GETS TOO BALMY FOR THE OLD BUS, AND THE ALCOHOL IN THE RADIATOR BOILS OVER

MR. SLICK, SMOOTH-TONGUED SALESMAN FOR THE FAMOUS "DISSIP - 8" LAUNCHES THE "BIG DRIVE"

TO FLORIDA

RUMBLE SEATS ARE PRIED OPEN AGAIN AND —

"ONE-MAN" TOPS FOLDED BACK ON THE "PNEUMONIA" MODELS

DAD SPENDS TWO WHOLE DAYS SMEARING UP THE FAMILY HACK WITH A BEAUTIFUL "DAWN-GRAY" LACQUER, WHICH WILL SOON TURN TO A DIRTY AIREDALE BROWN

J.T. Berryman

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked; a licence plate reading "DC 11-A" is also recorded. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 5743093.

## Why a car joke is in a propaganda archive

The archive tags it for euphemism and says the tag is weak here. That is a fair reading. Nobody is being recruited, and no enemy is drawn. The cartoon's target is sales talk. The first panel is the plainest joke: the weather turns "too balmy for the old bus," and the alcohol in the radiator boils over. The sales labels ("Dawn-Gray," "One-Man" tops) sit next to what the owner actually gets: a "dirty Airedale brown" and a convertible the cartoonist renames the "Pneumonia" model. The salesman is "Mr. Slick," and his car is the "Dissip-8," a name that reads as "dissipate."

Showrooms use euphemism too. A cartoon that sets the label beside the result shows readers how to test any label, whoever prints it. The archive classes the source as openly identified: a named cartoonist in a named paper, signing his work.

## The record

The original is held by the National Archives in the Records of the U.S. Senate, in the Jim Berryman Political Cartoons series (NAID 5730852), as item NAID 5743093. The archive files the purpose as "warn or inform," the issuer type as media, and the theme as economy and finance. The licence plate on the car in the drawing reads "DC 11-A," a District plate in a Washington paper. The signature on the sheet is "J.T. Berryman."

The site has several later Evening Star cartoons by Berryman: the 1938 WPA sower, a 1950 holiday toll cartoon, and the 1963 Birmingham rose.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Signs of Spring, 11 March 1928. Washington Evening Star (cartoonist Jim Berryman).

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (NAID 5730852), item NAID 5743093, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/berryman-signs-of-spring-1928/