The Oatmeal Festival began in 1978 as a spoof of the many chili cook-offs that take place in Texas. Most every small town has their own festival to get “city folks” to come out and spend a few bucks, and everybody has a good time. We had the rural community of Oatmeal as our neighbor to the south, and it was simply too good an idea to overlook. Speaking of Oatmeal, the folks who put together the official map of the State of Texas at that time had also decided to leave Oatmeal off the map because there was not an intersection of main highways there. Well, something had to be done. Now we had a cause! Ken Odiorne, who had lived in the Oatmeal community (in an area he knew as Ignert Ridge), dreamed it all up, and with a little prodding from some good folks got it all going. He wrote to all the major producers of oatmeal (the cereal, that is) and asked them for some assistance. Only National Oats, the maker of 3 Minutes Oats, responded.
Oatmeal (the town) is back on the map, and we have a lot of folks who come home to the country every Labor Day Weekend, no matter the weather, because everyone looks forward to the Oatmeal Festival. Over the years the money raised has provided high-school students with college scholarships, and built an open-air pavilion in Bertram as well as a community center down in Oatmeal. Scholarships are given to local high school graduates every year. In addition, financial assistance has been given to many local events including the Easter Egg Hunt, Santa’s Workshop, and the Burnet County Livestock Show.
