The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile Is In Town!

Maggie and Zachary with the Wienermobile.

This week the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile came to town. The pair who are accompanying t were guests at our Thursday evening Duluth Toastmasters Zoom meeting. Zachary Chatham and Maggie Thomas brought an exuberant, upbeat mood to the meeting. To be frank, they were bunderful. (Their repertoire features tons of puns.)

Before sharing more on their adventure I thought I'd tell a little about the history of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. The first Wienermobile was created in 1936 by Carl Mayer, a 27-foot-long hot dog on wheels. In fact, there are currently six traveling across the U.S. right now.

The 1952 Wienermobile has been residing at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

The 1969 Wienermobile model featured Ford Thunderbird taillights, a Chevy motor home frame and, legend has it, averaged 187 smiles per gallon.

The Oscar Mayer story begins in 1873 when 14-year-old Oscar F. Mayer moved to the U.S. from Bavaria, settling in Detroit with his first job as a butcher boy. From there he moved to Chicago and worked in the retail industry. The blending of these two experiences eventually led to a hot dog business that is as American as apple pie.

The first Oscar Mayer shop opened in 1883 with first day sales of $59. They were rolling in the dough, dough that would later be used for buns.

After WWI the brothers bought a meat packing plant in Madison, Wisconsin, with yet larger ambitions. To this day Madison is the HQ. When I spoke with Maggie and Zach, I learned that Madison is where they were trained for their one year trial by fire on the road as the face of Oscar Mayer in the Wienermobile. No matter how you grill them, though, they leave you smiling.

In 1929, Oscar Mayer created their Yellow Band as a signature of quality. It became the first branded meat in the country. This event had nothing to do with the collapse of the U.S. economy that followed. In fact, it was in 1936, in the middle the Great Depression, that the company introduced its first Wienermobile, driven by Little Oscar to events, grand openings and in parades.

Do you remember the Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle? If you can identify the year in which it was created, then you can win a free wiener whistle. Answer, and where to get your whistle, at the end of this blog post.

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Yes, it is registered with the Department of Transportation.

The Wienermobile itself has a V-8 6 liter engine with an Isuzu chassis. Inside it has six seats with mustard floors, meat belts, catsup and mustard colored seats and a bun roof. The vehicle is 60 hot dogs long and 24 high. When I asked what it's like to drive, Zach said it's like driving a large SUV.

EN: How did you hear of this Wienermobile opportunity?

Zachary Chatham: I heard about the Wienermobile opportunity from my father and immediately jumped at the chance to apply because my great grandfather drove the Wienermobile! In terms of Maggie and I, we listen to different types of music but we’re both pretty open and have been going back and forth allowing the other the chance to explore our music interests.

Maggie Thomas: My mom read an article about the job opportunity and sent it to me because I have a degree in communications, enjoy traveling, and love hot dogs. When I found out I’d be one of twelve Hotdoggers in class 33, I was thrilled! To prepare for a year on the hot dog highways, we attended hot dog high. We learned about the history of Oscar Mayer and the Wienermobile, gained PR skills and were taught how to drive the American Icon.

They appear to really relish their hot doggin' lifestyle.

EN: Will you be staying within the same region all year? How many states and which ones? And what is the best way to find a Wienermobile near them?

Zachary: We will be traveling within the central region of the United state until December where we will switch regions as well as partners and experience a new region of the country.

Maggie: In terms of tracking the Wienermobile and following our coast to coast wienie roast, you can go on the Oscar Mayer website and they have a Wienermobile tracker filled with all 6 Wienermobiles upcoming cities and events.

It is purportedly the largest moving billboard in the U.S., though I did not fact-check that.

When I asked their backgrounds I learned that Maggie studied communications in college and recognized this experience as an invaluable way to learn more about Public Relations. Part of the training included learning how to reach out to media, and by the first day they'd already been in contact with our local TV stations. "This has been a real chance to learn" she said.

Maggie hails from Tupelo, MS. (Think Elvis.) Zachary is from Charlotte. Both have a Southern drawl and cheerful, upbeat disposition.

Want to know where the Wienermobile will be this week, month or year? 

Visit https://khcmobiletour.com/wienermobile

You can also learn more here.

To follow Zach and Maggie on Instagram 

 @ZachnCheesin @MustardMags

Related Link
Reading the Oscar Mayer story reminded me of another German entrepreneur who came to America in the 1800s and made good. You can read the story of C.F. Martin here:
Add Martin Guitar Factory to Your Bucket ListMartin Guitars

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Trivia Question Answers: The Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle made its radio debut in 1963. You can get a Wiener Whistle anywhere you find Zach and Maggie this week in the Wienermobile.

Is That Really What You Want? How Do You Know? Thoughts from The Century of Self.

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes 1:18

A couple weeks ago I saw a question on Quora that intrigued me. Someone asked, "What is the hardest truth?" Several thoughts came to mind, one of them being the awareness of how chained we are by habit, genetic disposition, the formative influence of our upbringing, our tastes, our temperaments… and that to change our selves is exceedingly hard and far more difficult than we imagine.

The irony is that we believe we're free agents. It certainly feels like we're free. I can order anything on this menu that I want, right? I can watch any movie I want. Or read any book I want.

In 2002 the BBC broadcast a four-part documentary called The Century of Self. It's an eye-opening look at recent history from a new angle, from "behind the curtain" as it were.

When we think of influential people in our lives, I doubt that very many of us think of Sigmund Freud. Most people (I have no evidence and am only guessing here) associate Freud with the idea of a patient lying on a couch talking to a psychologist taking notes, or with what seem like strange notions of repressed sexuality, Oedipal complexes and the like. The Century of Self addresses another way in which Freud influenced us, through techniques of mass manipulation developed and implemented by his nephew Edward Bernays, the founder of modern Public Relations (a term which itself is a euphemism for propaganda.)

"By satisfying the masses' inner selfish desires one made them happy, and thus docile." Bernays, this program claims, was central in the development of "the all-consuming self which has come to dominate our world today."

Why are there so many hoarders among us these days? How is it that there are so many storage facilities in existence today, a whole industry that sprang up to store excess stuff, stuff that people don't use or need or know what to do with because they have so much other stuff?

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The series has four parts. They were:
"Happiness Machines"
"The Engineering of Consent" 
"There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads; He Must Be Destroyed" 
"Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering"

A description of Part 1 includes this paragraph:

Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticizing the motorcar. His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.

The BBC PR for this documentary describes the program this way:
To many in politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly, the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

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There's much more that can be said here, but it's time to start my day. If you have time, the programs are enlightening. You can also read a synopsis here on Wikipedia.

Meantime, life outside goes on all around you. Think about it.