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 5th 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!
