I didn't get the reference at all. What a weird ad campaign, I thought. What are the odds that you'd see the skywriting and Jack Benny, and feel comfortable approaching him at something as personal as his petroleum choices?

But this is a Texaco ad playing on a decades old bit. Jack Benny was too miserly to pay for a lot of gas, always eeking out the last little bit of his 1920s Maxwell. There were TV ads and more TV ads. You had to know Jack Benny to get any of this, but everyone knew Benny.

It looks like Walt Bayer was just supposed to be the local Texaco man. No one knew him, which probably wasn't the case in many towns. People knew the man that wore the Texaco star.

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