Oatmeal and Uncle Harry

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 19 April 2005


"A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."
- Oats, as defined by Samuel Johnson in his English dictionary of 1747

“Which is why England is known for its horses and Scotland for its men."
- reply issued by James Boswell, the Scottish biographer of Sam’l Johnson


Regular readers of this blog have been asking when I was planning to write a story about oatmeal. Well, this story has been a long time in developing –forty years, to be precise, and I owe it all to my Uncle Harry.

Uncle Harry Killion was a professional horse trainer. He used to earn money by winning horse jumping contests at county fairs. I remember a Palomino he had when he was in his seventies. Uncle Harry took him into the front yard and had the Palomino perform tricks for us. Uncle Harry had the knack with horses. He always had horses and Dalmatian dogs.

When I was in college, I became interested in the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. It had been held in Forest Park, across the street from my school, Washington University in St. Louis. I read about one of the attractions - a reenactment of a famous Boer War battle by the men who had actually fought on both sides in that war. That sounded really weird to me, and so it caught my imagination. Uncle Harry had been born in 1883, so I figured he might have gone to the 1904 World's Fair and seen the reenactment.

I asked him if he had gone to the 1904 fair. He said yes! I asked him if he remembered seeing the reenactment.

"No-o-o-o." his old man voice quavered softly.

I was kicking myself, thinking I had waited too long to ask him about the fair, and now his memory had slipped away and fabulous insights into history had been lost forever.

"I remember the Boer War, though," Uncle Harry said.

What?! I was astonished.

"I broke horses for the Boer War, for shipment to the Army. When I was 16 years old, I broke thirty horses in one week and set a record."

I felt bad for having doubted Uncle Harry's memory. He was still sharp as a tack.

Afterward, I realized I had a real asset in Uncle Harry. He could tell me about history from first-hand experience! Grandma was even older than Uncle Harry, she had been born in 1880, but any attempt to get Grandma to talk about history always ended in a paean to Jesse James. Grandma had been raised in central Missouri, where Jesse James was viewed as someone whom Robin Hood would have done well to emulate. No, Uncle Harry would be my source for historical information!

The next visit, I was thinking it might be interesting to ask Uncle Harry what invention had made the biggest impression on him. After all, he had witnessed the spread of electric lights, phonograph players, movies, radio, television, airplanes, computers, and atomic bombs!

"Oatmeal," he said. Uncle Harry’s interests were always kind of low-tech. He remembered when oatmeal had been introduced, primarily because of his disappointment with it. Someone had put it in a barrel that had been used to store bars of soap, so the oatmeal tasted soapy.

My extensive research into the history of oatmeal (a scan of what Wikipedia had to say on the topic) suggests that oatmeal has been around for centuries, so perhaps Uncle Harry had been referring to the introduction of Quaker Oats, which began doing business in 1877. The Quaker Oats Man became the first registered trademark for a breakfast cereal.



Above: The original 1877 image of the Quaker Oats Man. The scroll he is holding has the word “Pure” on it.

After years of selling in bulk (180 lb. bags), in 1885 Quaker Oats began packaging their product in two-pound square boxes. An innovative company, Quaker Oats was the first cereal to feature a recipe on its package (oatmeal bread, 1891), the first to offer a packaged premium (chinaware), and the first to offer a mail-away premium (a cereal cooker, 1915). Of course, the pièce de résistance of the Quaker Oats Company was their 1950’s Sgt. Preston promotion (see my story “One Square Inch of the Yukon”).

To be fair, Uncle Harry was no slouch in the “tech” department. His hobby was woodworking, and I have a small cherry wood bowl with lid and several picture frames that Uncle Harry made for me. Two of the frames he milled from logs that had been part of the cabin once lived in by Mrs. Rachel Boon Henson. Rachel was my g-g-g-grand aunt and a first cousin, three times removed, of the American Frontiersman, Daniel Boone.

Uncle Harry’s woodworking always impressed me. What impressed me even more, however, was that he had made his woodworking equipment himself! I remember a lathe Uncle Harry had constructed by using an old sewing machine motor. Until Uncle Harry, it had never occurred to me that one could make one’s own power tools.

I suppose the folks at Craftsman tools are hoping that the news of Uncle Harry doesn’t get out.