My Book……………….LILAGCS (39)

Monday July 1, 2014

Part 2

Creation of Bert Burger & The Farm Progress Show

In the last Blog I spent time writing about my experiences working at Wallace's Farmer magazine and just touched on meeting Larry Black, a Agricultural Photographer. I hired Larry to shoot 35mm slides of all aspects of the Farm Show. After it was over I received a strange looking package wrapped in plain newspaper. It was setting on my desk one day when I came into my office. My partner in the office, Carol Locker, told me that Larry Black had dropped it off a few minutes ago.

I started to unwrap it and to my surprise there was a note saying “ Many people that get hired to do a special job reward the ones that hired them with a monetary gift. The note explained that Larry explained he didn’t do things like that, but in his appreciation of my hiring him he want to give me a special gift. I opened it up and guess what I saw. It was (see below) the new camera body of a Nikon FM 35mm Reflex camera:

 

35mm Nikon FM Camera body

He also went on to say that He didn’t give money, but wanted me to have the beginning of an experience using the same kind of camera he used. Larry went on to say that I could purchase lens for the camera and he suggested a 50mm lens to start with as a basic lens for all occasions (see below):

 

50 mm Nikon f 1.8 Lens

Not too long after I received the Nikon FM camera I used some money I had been saving to purchase 2 more lenses and an automatic winder See below:

 

 

135 mm Lens and a 50mm wide angle lens

automatic film winder

With all these new camera items and a new camera bag to carry them in, I was all set to learn how to take photographs (35 mm slides to start with.

I remember at the Farm Progress Show in Crawfordsville, Indiana was the show where I started my training. Larry was a different person. He would do things that the normal person didn’t do. For example, he rode to the show on his motorcycle and pulled a small motorcycle trailer behind with his equipment a tent and his food supply.

He ask me to join him on the first day and proceeded to tell me that “film was cheap” but the rest of the process was costly. For that reason he told me to not skimp on shooting photos (slides in our case). We took slides of the exhibits, and mostly people as well as the many aspects of the show. (the food tents the harvesters harvesting the grain and everything). We ended up shooting over 6,000 slides and Larry had built a 35mm slide processor to develop them. It was an assume experience. As the months went on I spent a lot of time with Larry learning the many techniques of professional photo shooting. This is the end of Part 2, I will continue with my creation of the Bert Burger character in Part 3 to come.

 

 

My Book…………………..LILAGCS (38)

Sunday June 30, 2014

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This Blog about a character I created, Bert Burger and the Farm Progress Shows that were both a big part of my working career when I worked at Wallace’s Farmer magazine back in the 1980’s

 

      

Part 1

There was a point in time after I resigned from Casey’s General Stores while I was caring for Sharon that I was working part-time at the Fareway store in Perry. In order to get the entire story in perspective, I will need to take you back to my job at Wallace’s Farmer where I met a man named Larry Black.

When I was working at Wallace’s Farmer one of my jobs was to coordinate many of the activities that involved the Annual “Farm Progress Show”. The Farm Progress Show was created to give the Wallace’s Farmer magazine advertisers the opportunity to display their products and/or services at an annual event set up on a rotating schedule in the three Farm Progress magazine states of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. There were 4 states in the Farm Progress group at the time I worked for them back in the 1980’s, but Wisconsin had a special yearly show of their own.

I Hired a Photographer

There is a man that I now will introduce you to that I was able to use as my photographer to take 35mm slides that I used to prepare a promotional slide presentation to use when calling on the Advertisers in the magazines. Their participation would determine what size their booth would be at the Farm Progress Show.

I met this man, Larry Black, through Rex Weitzel, the one-man advertising agency that we used in the past at Felco when we created advertisements. Rex used Larry as the photographer that took the photographs of the farmers and the farm situations depicted in the ads. Larry was an excellent farm photographer and I want to use him to help me take the slide photographs I would use in up-coming sales presentations.

The Farm Progress Shows

I remember 3 Farm Progress Shows that I attended while I was working at the Wallace’s Farmer office. In Indiana we went to Crawfordsville, Indiana for a show. In Illinois we attended a show in Peoria, Illinois and the one I will spend time here writing about will be the 1980 Farm Progress Show in Iowa. It was held near to Nevada, Iowa and there were four farmer family hosts. Bill New was the farmer that lived on a farm that was very close to the 80 acre site. There were two brothers with the last name of Garlock and a fourth farmer that I think was named Ernie Otto.

For those of you that are not familiar with the Farm Progress Shows, I will explain some basic concepts that I remember. The shows were held on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. It was viewed that in the middle of the week it would help discourage non-farm people in attending. The 80 acre site was all in one piece with no railroad tracks of rivers running through the 80 acres. In the case of the Iowa location, it took 4 farm family farms to supply the amount ot land needed to accomplish the space requirement.

The person that was pretty much in charge of many activities and in lining up the space was the Editor of the State Farm magazine’s whose state it was held in this case it was Wallace’s Farmer magazine and Monte Sesker was the editor. All of the other editors and the sales people including me, the marketing services manager all had different jobs assigned to us. There were people assigned to parking, which was a large responsibility when you consider all of the farmers that attended during the three day event. In the past the attendance would span around 250,000 persons in the total three day show.

Much effort was made to make the setting up of advertiser’s spaces as easy as possible. The size of each space was determined by the amount of advertising space they purchased over the previous year. I recall that rain was not looked at as a comforting thought. It rained the two days before we allowed the advertisers to set up their booth or demonstration spaces. This caused great concern because the advertisers would many times have large semi trucks bring in the material that was used in constructing the spaces and with the wet and muddy conditions it would make manipulating around very difficult. Fortunately the rain stopped on Monday of the starting day of the show. And most of the major advertisers had managed to set their booths and spaces up before Monday. It was amazing to me how fast the sun was able to dry things out in just hours. The streets were still muddy but passable for walking if you would be careful where you stepped.

I should also mention that this 80 acre plot was like a little town. The space was divided by 10 streets and 10 avenues creating a crisscross pattern and making it seem like a small town. All of the booths and spaces were divided up in locations along these streets and avenues.

Each street had a food tent about half way in-between the length of the street. There were 10 food tents to serve the attendees to the show plus the sales people that manned the advertiser’s spaces and booths. The interesting thing I noted was that the food tents were run by the different church groups in the area. They got to keep the earnings made for their church. One important fact was that the Host farmer’s church or churches supplied the workers for the food tent right in the center of the 80 acre site usually on 5^th street. That tent was also allowed to open during the set up times the week before.

Supplying the food was pretty easy because the menus were the same exact food items and drinks at all the food tents. I recall some interesting facts about how much food was sold in the three day period. I was described in terms of railroad boxcars when describing how much hamburger was used and in tons how much catsup was also used. I remember those two items but there were lots more food items that blew your mind if you would hear how much was used. The Styrofoam cups were used and the amount of bread for the buns used when making the hamburgers and the hotdogs was unbelievable.

Just as a figure, that I recall, relating to the amount of money that the Host church made was close to $18,000 for the 3 days.

I remember one of my responsibilities was to print and distribute the Exhibitor  Kit used by the advertisers. It gave all of the instructions and also contained the “special” parking permit stickers used when attending the show. They were “priceless” because this meant that the bearer of one of these stickers could park within the boundaries of the 80 acre town. Also I must tell you about the airfield at the FPS. There was an air strip set aside for the “flying farmers” to land. It was a long flat strip of pasture ground where the small airplanes could land.

There were more things that went on at the Farm Progress Show but I must continue on with this Blog. Since it is longer that I expected, I will divide the Blog into Part 1 and Part 2 and maybe even Part 3!

See you for Part 2 next time!

My Book……………………..LILAGCS (37)

Friday June 27, 2014

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      Tribute To A very Good Friend !                      

                                    

    There are some of you that   may remember Denny Wessels

Denny went to be with our Lord a short time ago and he will dearly be missed by his wife, Family and especial those  of us that had the honor of knowing, working Playing and eating with him. I want to take this opportunity to reminisce some of the great things that he and I experienced together.

I went to work at Farmers Regional Cooperative as my first real job using my art degree from college. I started in the Advertising Department that was closely associated to the In-Plant print shop. Denny was the manager of the print shop when I started. The first day I was there I was pretty uncertain of myself, but Denny came up at the morning coffee break and invited me to join him for coffee. I jumped at the chance to visit with someone. Denny told me about a new house that he and his wife Ardith (Ardy) had recently purchased and moved into on the Northeast part of Fort Dodge, not too far from Felco, where we worked. I was all ears and so excited to hear all about his new home.

During the course of his explanation of his new home he informed me that he had purchased some shrubs and four or five small trees to add to the outside of their lot.He was hinting that he could use a little help after work in planting the shrubs and trees. I told him I was doing nothing and would be glad to help him out.

We went home to his new house after work that afternoon and his wife, Ardy met us in the front yard of their new house and expressed her feelings for him talking me into helping him plant the shrubs and trees. She said the least she could do was offer me supper with he famous German chocolate cake for desert. Well I look back now and remember why she felt that way. It seems that we had over 200 honeysuckle shrub seedlings to plant and four small trees.

We ended up planting by the headlights of his uncle Don’s pickup until well after midnight. We got it done but I will never forget that experience as my first encounter with Denny. Ardy and Denny never forgot either, we would kid about it from time to time. The German chocolate cake was a symbol of that night and we had it often when we would go over to their place.

Denny and I became very close friends and worked together at Felco as well. There were many other things that I remember doing with Denny. He took me to the first café (if you could call it that!) where I had my first “Coney” (hotdog with chili sauce on a bun). We went to a place that he took his daughter to when Ardy wasn’t looking! It was called “Mike’s” and it was downtown Fort Dodge on one of the side streets. It was very small with only about 8 bar stools and 4 sit-down style booths. Mike would prepare the Coney's as we ordered them from behind the counter, along with French fries many times. I always had 2 Coney's  and Denny had at least 3 and sometimes 4. He was a big eater!

One thing I will never forget is that the ceiling inside sloped downward the closer you got to the back end. Mike had a fella that washed dishes, stooped over,cause he was to tall to stand up straight. He would also come out from his dish washing to mop the floor in the main part of the place and we would have to lift out feet to let him mop under our table many times while we were eating. We went there almost once a week. We never told Ardy how much we ate either, but I have a feeling she already knew!

Another eating experience was the pizzas at Pasqualies Pizza. When we went there, Denny would order a Large pizza and eat it all himself. I could maybe eat half a large pizza to try and keep up with Denny.

All our fun times had to do with food, it seems. We also had this place at the East end of the main Fort Dodge business district called Ethel’s. She mad the best eggs, hash browns and large sausage patties that I ever remember eating. We would sneak down there almost once a week and have our Ethel’s breakfast that really made the week for us.

There were many other eating events and also can’t forget the dance club that we joined and would go out after it was over for breakfast, usually about 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning.

Well I am sure if I think I could come up with many more “fun experiences” we had together. Like remodeling their basement and the water problem they had and he almost spent enough for a small city water plant for just his house and lot.

I also remember his fishing drive. We went up to Bemidji Minnesota to Legion Lake 3 or four years in a row and man did we have fun playing “spoon” and eating Maid Rites in Bemidji!!!!

I will miss Denny and will keep this Blog as a reminder of the many, many good times we had. I just hope his family knows how much I loved Denny and will always remember his smile!….Dave

My Book……………………LILAGCS (36)

Friday June 27, 2014

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Special Editor’s Comment

As many of you may or may not know my great desire is and has been to actually publish some or all of my Book about my autobiography ….LILAGCS.

I am currently in the process of placing all of the editors from the “Spencer Daily Reported” and their emails. I will try  contact them using my Special E-mail for items related to my Book!

I also am doing the same thing to Readers Digest and Guideposts magazines.

I am hoping this effort will bring an opportunity to get something published from my autobiography. I will continue keeping you up-to-date as to my progress.

If any of you have any additional suggestions please send them to me when you reply to this Blog.

You are all so encouraging and I thank you from the bottom of my heart (which, by the way is doing well) My other items like diabetes and cholesterol are also under control thanks to my sweet wife, Evelyn. She spends time making sure I have clean feet and medication I need to keep my health in check………see you in the next Blog.

My Book………………….LILAGCS (35)

Monday June 23, 2014

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I must relate to you that in my last Blog (34) I focused on a small beginning part of Paul Laughin’s memory. I basically remembered where he lived and the business that his dad had set up, cleaning burlap grain bags, in their garage in back of his house. I also commented on the 3 small business that were located across  the street fro his house in the “what we called” Up town. Paul must have either remembered of read the longer writing about us when we took a trip to Indiana over a past Christmas vacation. I will jump around from person to person as I remember things.

This morning I got an E-mail from Don and Judy Kingfield that reviewed the this that had happened since my birth in 1941. It was extremely interesting. Watching is E-mail sent me to events that Don and I experienced back when we were younger.

I will star with how I first met Don. I am not real sure, but I think it was in 8th grade. I remember that he lived on the street that I traveled to return to my home. It was a small house and I still remember his dad sitting in a rocking chair in their living room. His dad was quite a bit older than his mother I later learned and was the manager of our local state liquor store. His mom was a house wife but later became one of our teachers,  first teaching Latin.

Don played baseball and was a very good pitcher. I remember I always wished I could play baseball as good as he did. (stay with me….I am thinking!).

It wasn’t until after we graduated and were out of high school that we started playing basketball to the Sac City “town team”. Soon after that we tried baseball for the town team. I don’t remember, but Don and Judy were either married or still going together when we played baseball for the town team. I still remember one time, after a game, we went to this town and Judy was driving the car. Don and I had quite a bit to drink and it was a good thing she drove. We didn’t do anything we shouldn’t but we did have a good time, as I recall. I think the town we played was Cylinder, Iowa. I will try to remember more about my acquaintance with Don an later Blogs!

My Book…………………LILAGCS (34)

June 20, 2014

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I have received enough replies from the last Blog (33) that I know it worked when I posted and set it out.

I have been trying to decide what would be a good way to continue this LILAGCS blog. I thought I would choose one of my classmates and tell as much about him or her that I remember.

Paul Laughin

I have decided to write about Paul. Paul and I did many things I recall when Paul comes to my memory. There were a couple of things that come to my mind when think of “Up town” and “Down town” in Sac City, it had both. I soon learned that “Down town” was the main business district where most of the stores were located up or down the big hill on highway 20 as you came into Sac City from the West or East.

“Up town” was a small area up the hill and to the North of the highway 29 at about 12 street. The “up town” area was small and there were only a few businesses located there. Greenlee’s Food Market, a Variety gift shop, run by a lady named Emma Parr, and a café called the Green Lantern. Paul and his family lived directly South and across the street from the Variety Store.

When I first went to visit Paul I learned that he kept busy working with a system of cleaning burlap bags that his dad had set up in their garage. Paul’s dad worked in a feed mill and ad a limitless supply of empty feed bags.

He earned money for his efforts and I enjoyed watching and sometimes helping him clean the bags.

We would, many times, go over to the café and get a bottle of pop and a donut. I only lived a few blocks from where we were on north 12 street. That is the beginning of my experience with Paul, I will continue with more in my next Blog.

My Book………………….LILAGCS (33)

June 18, 2014

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I decided that I would go ahead and write another Blog here, hoping that my last Blog here that I asked all of you to reply …if you received it. I will assume that you got it and that is why I am writing this now!

One little joke I just thought about when I used the word assumed….Just break it down……. assume means you make an “ass” out of “u” and “me.! That is why I am very careful how and when I use the word. I have been trying to send the story about my Spencer Daily Reporter paper route in Spencer when I was in about the 6th grade. I went to their website but I ran into a problem (maybe one of you can help me!) The only choice I had in sending them an e-mail was to use MS Outlook Express. I have tried to install Outlook Express but so far I haven’t been able to get it installed and get it to work.

Mary K Sine (Farmer) told me about a man from Estherville, Iowa that submitted his story as a story to the city newspaper.     

She suggested I do the same with the Spencer Daily Reporter. Any assistance you can give me would be appreciated.

When I started the route I had the West side of Main street. Two girls had they East side of Main street.I had 98 customers both businesses and people that lived in apartments above the businesses.

     I started my deliveries at the hotel across the street, north of the Newspaper office. It ended at my home in the fire station at the south end of Main street. You may go back to LILAGCS (B-2) One of the first blogs here! Read it and let me know if you think it would be a good story for them to publish!

My Book………………..LILAGCS (32)

June 18m 2914

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Since we lost our Internet connection almost 20 months ago, a lot of things have changed. I am in the process of trying to learn all of those changes.

Our E-mails are somewhat different. we are basically using our Yahoo e-mail: daveve_4163@ yahoo.com.ph and my G-mail account.

We also have Skype but so far only one classmate uses it and we have been able to chat and visually see each other. I have been able to email my son Bart and also talk to him on our cell phone with a special phone card connection. I have also talked to a couple other classmates on that same phone card connection. I have been attempting to determine where I left off on this LILAGCS Blog so I could continue. I have had a bit of trouble doing that but if I “Hang in There” I will have it mastered soon.

My Book………………..,.LILAGCS (31)

June 13, 2014  Friday

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This Blog #31 is  “Test” Blog to see if I can still publish Blogs from this Windows Live Writer. If I can I will continue My Book (32) as the next Blog about my life (Autobiography).