Monday August 11, 1941
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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.
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