I was talking to a sign painter friend of mine the other day. An aficionado of painted sign history, he was regaling me with tales of ads painted on barns and commercial buildings, and I, a dedicated member of the Wheat Ridge Historical Society, was inviting him to the Society’s Second Saturday Social on March 8th when the group plans a garden seed exchange (at the Baugh House, 10-2).
A few minutes after we hung up, an email arrived with some amazingly bizarre photographs. Some were of postcards, one of a farm hand sitting atop a mountain of huge vegetables loaded on a horse-drawn wagon, another of a farmer with a giant onion in a wheelbarrow. What really caught my eye, though, was the gargantuan celery plant loaded onto a flatbed railroad car.
I’d seen a couple of those type of ads popular in the late nineteenth century, but that celery postcard piqued my interest. It reminded me of local pioneer Bert White, a farmer who owned 15 acres where the Historical Park is now located, purchased from James Baugh who lived down the road from the sod house where Bert and wife Etta took up residence with their two boys in 1889.
I realized Bert’s farming business coincided with that curious advertising fad, examples of which I was looking at. Those doctored photos appeared in magazine and newspaper ads, on postcards and were even painted on buildings. They all featured comically gigantic vegetables, often accompanied by bragging tag lines like, “The kind we grow in (fill in the blank)”.
It made me wonder if Bert ever used such advertising. Research brought not a whit of evidence that our favorite farmer used such trickery to advertise his produce, but we do know that he became quite successful, possibly by chance. The story goes that Bert received his first celery seeds from one of his farm hands who had smuggled them out of Italy by sewing them into his hems before returning from a family visit. As fate would have it, Bert switched from other crops to celery-raising, European Giant Pascal celery, to be exact. Pascal celery is the type we eat today; its white stalks are sweeter and larger than its predecessors.
Bert found great success in celery farming, and it’s no wonder. According to the seed section of an early 1900s Henry Lee farm catalog, Giant Pascal celery, along with its “superior keeping qualities”, guaranteed “very large, thick, solid, crisp stalks with a rich, nutty flavor.” This scrumptious produce soon found its way annually from the Bert White Farm to pre-Thanksgiving deliveries at the White House where it probably made the chef swoon.
Sadly, the outrageously large veggie ad fad all but disappeared as the 20th century wore on, and the rising popularity of television sounded the death knell. Hard to stage such a sight on live television, and, really, who would believe it?
My friend, the sign painter, will be in town for the Historical Society’s May Festival to paint an advertising mural on the north wall of the Old Post Office in the Historical Park. Since the park was once part of Bert White’s thriving celery farm, he promises giant celery will be part of the mural. Plan to watch the mural’s creation at the festival on May 10th and donate at the website: wheatridgehistorical.org.
