My Book…………………….LILAGCS (44)

Tuesday August 26, 2014

One thing that keeps me going and keeps my mind alert is to recall special events in my past that I really had a Great experience doing. This is one of those events.I decided to go to my brother Jim’s for Thanksgiving. I made the decision to take the bus because of the low cost. I had some very interesting things happen as I will now share with you in the Blog below.

Bus Ride to Massachusetts 2004

Sometime in late summer 2004 I made the decision to visit my brother in Massachusetts for Thanksgiving. It had been a long time since I had done any traveling. I did a lot of traveling with my job at LeFebure back in the 1980s when I was in charge of the company’s banking trade show participation.

                                   Banking Equipment

I had pretty much decided I was not going to do much traveling after I finished with LeFebure. I was living in Cedar Rapids at that time. I moved to Estherville to work with Golden Sun Feeds for about 3 years then to Perry, Iowa where I commuted to Des Moines and I went to work for Wallace’s Farmer magazine.

         

One of my main concerns was I would have to leave all my “stuff”. I didn’t have that much but what I did have I was not wanting to leave it. Finally after a lot of talking to myself and answering lots of questions that were on my list of reasons why not to go I made the decision to close my eyes and just go.

The bus terminal in Iowa City , where I lived, was close to the Senior Center where I went quite often. I quickly made friends with the bus terminal employee and was soon convinced he was going to do his best to guide me through the bus ordeal.

I would leave Iowa City about 1 PM and arrive in Chicago to catch my connecting bus.

            

What I didn’t know was the delays and extra time it took to get to Chicago. To my dismay when I got there, my connecting bus had already left. The bus terminal was so crowded it was crazy.

 

      

I finally ask enough people that I learned that I needed to go to a place that scheduled bus trips and get a new route and schedule. I called Jim and alerted him to my situation and he said, just to cool it and go with the flow. (The flow wasn’t going any where!)

I was able to keep my traveling bags and large suitcase with me and I found a place to sit and wait. I had a 6 hour wait until my connecting bus would leave. I had two choices. To go through New York City or take another route that was about 2 hours longer but just passes through smaller Cities, It took me through Cleveland, Cincinnati Ohio, Albany, New York and on to Springfield, MA.The only bus change I would have was in Springfield to Amherst, MA. The others were all stops to rest, have a snack and continue on. There were 5 or 6 other short stops where we stayed on the bus while they “let off” or “took on” passengers.

Again I called Jim from Albany to let him know where I was. He told me that someone would be at the depot in Amherst to meet me. It wasn’t much, just a business where the bus stopped.

              

He told me it would probably be his friend “Dave” that would meet me and drive me to where Jim lived.

I got to Springfield and transfer to a “Peterpan Bus” and had a short wait until we made the 30 minute trip to Amherst.

                      

Just as Jim had told me, His friend Dave was there to meet me and took me on to meet Jim.

 

 

                                                   

My Book………………….LILAGCS (43)

Monday August 25, 2014

 

Special Blog from my trip to Visit My Brother Jim in 2004

When I went to visit Jim back in 2004, he took me to Springfield, MA where we went to a special hamburger shop called the “White Hut” that served the best hamburgers, hot dogs, French fries and fried onions I have ever eaten.

Below is a photograph of the gill that the food was prepared on:

 

The person frying the burgers and fried onions and hot dogs was constantly busy.

They had a small serving counter that had about 10 stools to sit on. There were so many people waiting that they were lined up over four deep at times. Jim placed our order and we were surprised when two stools opened up for us to sit down at the counter. Below are more photographs I took inside the White Hut food shop:

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

            

Outside their were very few parking spaces and we had to park across the street from the Hut. We really didn’t have to wait very long to get our order. We were able to watch them prepare the food right before our eyes. The ketchup, mustard and other condiments were sitting on the counter right in front of us. We got a can of soda from a cooler in the rear. It was an eating experience like I have never had before. People were constantly coming and going all with smiles of satisfaction on their faces. We were so happy to have been able to sit on the stools and get a front side view of them preparing all the items. This was an experience I will never forget.

MY Book……………..LILAGCS (42)

Sunday August 24, 2014

A New Photo and Good News

      

Here is a new Photo and the News is that we have a new grand daughter that was born on my birthday August 21 at 8:12 PM, I was born at 9:15 PM my mother told me. Isis is one hour older than me! Ha!  Ha!

Regards to All…….

Dave

My Book………………….LILAGCS (41)

Tuesday August 19, 2014

Time is Getting Close

In 2 days I will have another birthday! It will be my seventy third (73) birthday. I should have something to write on my birthday.

My memory is not working too well right now. I recall my 16th birthday. I was old enough to get a learner's permit for driving a car. I can remember I was not too excited to get the permit and waited a couple of weeks before I went down and got my permit. We had an old black, 4 door Plymouth with a stick shift. Dad said he wanted me to learn on a stick shift not and automatic. I would practice backing up and driving down our driveway to the house where we lived the back again.

           

                

                       1950 4 door Plymouth

It is now 2 days later and my birthday today. I feel so Blessed to have good health other that the diabetes which I have under control. For the most part  my wife, Evelyn keeps me healthy with he doctoring.

I plan to keep on Blogging here and appreciate any and all encouragement you can send my way. I know I have had a couple of long spells where I have not been able to Blog for one reason or another but I will try my best to be more consistent at Blogging. Let me hear from you.

I will try and pick up the Memory Blog where I stopped and continue with stories as I remember them, OK?

Bless  you all and hope you are all doing well.

Dave

 

 

 

My Book…………………..LILAGCS (40)

Monday August 11, 1941

 

*********************

Bert Burger

and the Farm Progress Show

Part 3

This id the 3rd part of a section I call “Bert Burger and the Farm Progress Show.” I spent the previous 2 parts sharing with you things I remembered about the Farm Progress Show back in the 80’s when I was working for Farm Progress Publications at Wallace’s Farmer magazine’s office in Des Moines, Iowa. One of the sections (#2) was devoted to my receiving a 35mm reflex camera and the lenses I acquired after I received the camera body from my photographer friend Larry Black. This 3rd part I will go into the details, as I remember, about how I created the character, Bert Burger.

Bert didn’t just happen or “pop up” out of the clear blue sky one day. As I think back, I had resigned from my job at Casey’s General Stores to spend full time caring for my wife as she experienced having a brain tumor. I made the decision to “trust the Lord” in providing me with the means to survive without a full-time regular job.

I would search and take part-time jobs to provide our income. I found it fairly easy to fall back on my previous experiences like; sign painting, radio announcing and the like to provide the needed income.

One job I found out about was working in the meat department of our local Fareway Food store in Perry, Iowa. Dallas Smith was the Meat Department manager and there were many others I soon became familiar working together. Some of the names I recall were Larry Cole, Joe ( last name?)and another fella I got very close to Doug ( I can not remember Doug’s last name.)

Working in the meat department was a fairly tough and demanding job. We had to know how to cut and place the meat cuts into the refrigerated meat counter in the front of the meat department area. I remember Dallas asked Doug and I to be responsible for making the “home-made” bratwurst links and patties. This required a knowledge of knowing the ingredients and remembering them. As I remember Doug and I followed the ingredients except we added a bit more “mace” ( an ingredient,) to our recipe than the original one called for. We soon discovered that our customer’s preferred out “special recipe” over the original one.

We were busy one day making a batch of our Brats (as they were called) when in came the advertising manager of the local weekly newspaper ( The Perry Chief). His first name was Ron and last was Shomacher. He was all upset and we asked him to tell us what he was upset about. He told us that there was going to be special ridicules day celebration in about 3 weeks and he had asked to have all the good cooks to submit their chili recipes and they would be judged. He said that he had received no entries yet.

Doug and I got our heads together and came up with the following solution. We told him that we needed a way to make the readers so upset that they would want to enter. Doug looked at me and said “Bert we need to help Ron with his problem. Doug just picked the name “Bert” out of the air. I agreed and that’s how it started. Since we worked behind the meat counter and our hamburger was always a favorite, we came up with “Burger” as a last name. I then ,acting the part of Bert Burger, proceed to tell him that the reason there were no entries was because the were not any good chili cooks in the Perry area. Ron asked me if he could run an article to that effect in his next edition of the paper and I agreed. Doug and I decided that if he was going to run an article with a picture of “Bert” we need to disguise me to look like a Bert Burger character.

Well I started using my imagination and came up with an idea. I had a pair of farmer bided over-all's and a plaid long sleeved cowboy type shirt. To disguise my face I decided to go to a theatrical shop in West Des Moines and get some things to help me crate the disguise. When I finally got doe, I looked like the Photographs below:

      

                                                    Burt Burger

Yes , one other thing, the corduroy red cap that read “Casey’s General Store” while I worked at Casey’s I had a prototype cap created for Casey’s, but it was never used. So it was a “one of a kind” cap.

I posed for a picture to run in the Perry Chief and the local radio station got wind of what was going on and they did a special commercial using my special voice I came up with as Bert’s voice.

The next day after it ran in the paper and on the radio, Ron came running into the meat market shouting “It worked, It worked!” I have gotten over 50 entries and they are all very angry at the statement that Bert said about there not being any good cooks in the Perry area.

That was how Bert Burger was created and below is a photo of him preparing his entry at the special ridicules day event:   

               

I have tried and tried to remove all of the white space above and to the sides of the photo of Bert cooking his chili but haven’t been able to get the job done.

This concludes the part 3 describing how Bert Burger was created. I will tell you more in later Blogs what else Bert did in his short career.