It’s snowing lotsa oatmeal

by Rachel Bryson

To the world it’s the Oatmeal Festival. It’s a two-day event held every Labor Day weekend in Bertram with a parade, food, games, class reunions, beauty contests and the famous (or infamous), oatmeal cook-off.

But for a few people, it will always be, F.A.S.O.R.F.I.O.C.A.B.A.D. So, you never heard of it? You can’t pronounce it? You don’t know what the letters mean? Well, let me tell you a story.

Once, in the small town of Bertram, a man named Ken Odiorne moved there with his wife and three children. Like most people in Bertram in those days, he drove to Austin every day to work, while his children attended school and his wife, a nurse, worked locally. 

They joined a church and he became involved in the community. He was elected to the City Council and headed up several committees in town. Anyone who was around Ken realized very quickly that he had dreams and ideas that were usually outside the box. One of those dreams was about a festival for Bertram. Lots of towns all over the countryside had festivals, rodeos and special events, celebrating all sorts of things like bluebonnets, watermelons or water sports. But Ken wanted to have something unique.

He was, and is, a very good friend of mine and he kept talking to me, and others, about how fascinated he was with the name of the small community of Oatmeal, just south of Bertram.

It was the 1970s and he started writing letters to the big oatmeal companies in the country, trying to get some kind of sponsorship for a festival. We all thought the world of Ken, but privately several of us were discussing the possibility he might be just a little nuts for thinking any big corporation would respond to his ideas.

Then it happened. Ken had a friend who was a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman. That reporter received a call from a marketing person with 3-Minute Oats Co. They had been receiving letters from this guy in Bertram about an Oatmeal Festival, and the marketing person knew the reporter in Austin. The big corporation person had worked with the reporter and the reporter knew Ken. The reporter told the big corporation person that Ken was not crazy — well, maybe a little crazy — but the letters of inquiry about an Oatmeal Festival where legitimate.

When Ken received the call from 3-Minute Oats telling him they were interested in sponsoring the festival, he told me he called three people to get the ball rolling. 

“I called you, to start recruiting people to head up and work on committees. I called Ethel (Benedict) to keep the books and track the money, and I wanted Paula (Faught) because she was just as crazy as I was and I needed her ideas,” he said.

The rest is history. We all got together and put on a crazy little festival with some offbeat games and ideas, and 30-plus years later, it is still going strong. The money that is generated from the festival goes to the upkeep of the Oatmeal community buildings and projects and scholarships in Bertram. 

Ken still works with the festival, but he is also the driving force behind the very successful “all volunteer” recycling project in Bertram. Most of us now realize that Ken’s “outside the box” ideas were, and are, revolutionary. Well maybe not all of his ideas; take for example F.A.S.O. R.F.I.O.C.A.B.A.D. 

The true official name of the festival that was originally registered with the Texas secretary of state to incorporate the event is, The First Annual Shin Oak Ridge Festival Intergalactic Oatmeal Cook-off And Bertram Acceleration Days. It didn’t catch on; just the name, Oatmeal Festival, survived. So a couple of the crazy ideas didn’t stand the test of time.

My resume still says that I was a founding member and served on the first “Bowl of Directors” of the Oatmeal Festival. If an interviewer inquires about the item, I always think the person must have a good sense of humor. I am very proud of my small history with the festival.

Also, a clarification is needed for the facts listed in my last column about the scalawags and bushwhackers who roamed Burnet County during and following the Civil War. Darrell Debo did not provide definitions in the “Burnet County History Vol. I” printed by the Burnet Historical Commission in 1979. Those definitions were taken from Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language printed in 1983, a  copy of which sits next to this writer’s desk. 

The facts and dates of the votes for succession, recountings of the murders and descriptions of the violence were taken from the history book based on Debo’s research of newspapers, government reports and interviews. The opinions about the facts and the suggestion that the crimes are still open cold cases are the views of the writer.

Bryson is a former Highland Lakes reporter who lives in north Burnet County. E-mail her at oliverplaceranch@wildblue.net.