At the annual Oatmeal Festival, they don’t have the “Goat Pill Pop-Off” anymore. There are plenty of goat pills, or goat droppings if you will, around this central Texas community, but the tongue depressors the kids use to flip them are apparently hard to come by.
Also, the boiled okra eating contest was dropped. Too many folks got sick.
But there will still be plenty of activity at this year’s 20th anniversary festival from Aug. 29 to 31, including the overripe cantaloupe toss, the cow chip kickoff, the oatmeal box stacking and the oatmeal sculpture contest.
This unique festival began in 1978, when the neighboring town of Bertram needed money to save an old school. Oatmeal, five miles southwest of Bertram, also needed money to protect an old school building. So the two communities united for the “First Annual Shin Oak Ridge Festival, International Oatmeal Cook-Off and Bertram Acceleration Days.”
It was basically a spoof on other nearby towns that held festivals celebrating everything from bluebonnets to rattlesnakes.
“But the real reason it got started,” said Jo McDaniel of Bertram, “was that the highway department had dropped the community of Oatmeal from the state map, and we wanted to come up with something that would put it back on.”
Oatmeal is the second-oldest town in Burnet County. It was settled in 1849 by a German family named Habermill. No one can say exactly how the community got its name. Some believe that it was taken from a Mr. Othneil, who owned the area’s first gristmill; others say it came from the Habermill name. “Haber,” it is said, is a German dialect word for “Hafer,” meaning oats.
In recent years the community dwindled to a handful of ranchers and farmers, none of whom lives near the original town site. It is not on a major highway and does not have any kind of local government. It was, therefore, deleted from the map.
Because of the Oatmeal Festival, however, it’s back.
The Oatmeal school was repaired; the festival blossomed into a weekend event that is celebrated on Friday night in Oatmeal and then moves to Bertram on Saturday and Sunday.
“My husband, Morris, has been involved with the festival from day one,” McDaniel said. “He vows this will be his last year. He stays up all night cooking barbecue, about 300 pounds, and 15 to 20 goats. The goats are donated, so we’ll cook whatever we get. People come from all around, and all they want is the goat.”
Lifelong Bertram resident Terry Vaughn said, “The festival used to be held here along Main Street in Bertram, but it got too big, and they moved it to the roping arena on the other side of the highway.”
The event begins with a barbecue dinner Friday night in Oatmeal, where Miss Oatmeal Muffin (4-6 years old), Miss Oatmeal Cookie (7-9 years old) and Miss Oatmeal Queen (14-17 years old) will be crowned.
There is a Ms. Bag of Oats Contest, for women 55 and older; that takes place in Bertram.
On Saturday morning, events in Bertram start with the “Run For Your Oats Oat-a-Thon,” which begins under the water tower. There is an oatmeal cookoff and an oatmeal sculpting contest (wet oatmeal).
The highlight of the day is the grand parade.
“It is a nice-size parade. Towns from around the area send floats,” McDaniel said.
The crowning feature of the parade, however, is not the floats, the military band, the Shriners or the antique cars. It is the “Oatmeal Fly Over.”
A small plane drops to a low altitude over town and shakes out bags of dry oatmeal over the crowd below.
