Hooray for Post Cereals!

I love cereal.

Where I come from, we drag out our words but we compensate for it by shortening them. So it's a shorter word or phrase but by the time we insert the drawl it takes about as long to say it as it normally would. So we call it seerl.

Unlike the rest of my immediate family, I am NOT a breakfast cereal man.

R. and the kids could eat cereal for breakfast most every day and be satisfied. I, on the other hand, consider inferior, any breakfast that doesn't include cheese and a generous helping of animal fat.

I like my cereal at night as a just-before-bed snack.

There is something compelling about the literature on cereal boxes.

How many times have you munched a rhythm with your Captain Crunch as you read off the ingredients ..."SUGAR, corn starch, riboflavin, artificial color, artificial flavor, artificial ...."

Some savvy marketers have harnessed the power of the cereal box and have used it as a billboard for various movies or action figures. Other cereal companies have somehow absolved their conscience of all the guilt associated with being associated with an industrial concern in a capitalistic society and so they have used the cereal box to promote "awareness" . . . . environmental concerns, carbon footprints and all the other trite that fills our post-modern society.

The other night I was pleasantly surprised by the back of a box of "Honey Bunches of Oats".

I love stories, and there on the back of the box was a story all about Vern J. Herzing, who worked for Post Cereals as a student in the early 50's. He later returned to work full-time and became a facility manager in the late 70's.

Vern came up with an idea to combine all the cereals that his plant produced into one and on a Saturday afternoon, he and his 18 year old daughter set up something of a test lab in their kitchen. They worked together measuring and tasting various cereal combinations.

You see, Vern did not have a job - he had a passion!

Do you know what it's like to get an idea that gnaws away at you, and you just can't wait to jump into the doing of it.

We are created in the image of God and one of the things about us that most favors Him is creativity. Don't you hear the excitement and passion in God's voice in the Genesis creation account? Especially when He says ...

"THAT IS GOOD."

Anyway Vern's idea eventually came to fruition; people came alongside him and joined in his creativity by adding their own ideas. Eventually the cereal was market tested with the name of Battle Creek Cereal . . . that name didn't take, so they brought it back later and tested it under the name of Honey Bunches of Oats.

The cereal grabbed a big market share it's first year and has "grown to become one of the top-selling cereals in America today."

In the 19th century, an author of boy's books by the name of Horatio Alger, Jr. churned out numerous stories of boys who applied themselves, did the right thing and succeeded. AA is trying to read his first Horatio Alger, Jr. book now, but I think he is struggling with the antiquity of the language. Maybe there is a glimmer of hope that he will be able to find something contemporary that will pack the same punch - maybe even a cereal box.

Thank you Post Foods LLC of St. Louis, Missouri, for bringing back something we have lost in America - stories of the energy and fun of capitalism at work.

PostScript: It is difficult to know how to properly credit literature from a cereal box, so I will have to settle for linking to the website. . . http://www.onespoonful.com/ .