A few years back the citizens of this town got all riled up when state officials took Oatmeal off the map of Texas. They vowed to make something of themselves with this flaky festival, which features—besides the predictable oatmeal cook-off—oatmeal sculpture contests, oatmeal dunks, a penny search for kids in a pool filled with (dry) oatmeal and an oatmeal-box-stacking contest. Although this festival is now sponsored by the National Oats Company of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the town itself has nothing to do with oatmeal. It was named after the original settlers of the hamlet, a family called Habermill, a close approximation of the German for oatmeal. Oatmeal, by the way, has not yet been put back on the map of Texas.
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