Wake Trailing the Ship of One Pilgrim's Progress
Pulls Along an American Dream

By HUDSON OLD
Journal Publisher

Bo Pilgrim got his start with Wall Street in the usual way, running away from home with nine hogs. Read all about it in One Pilgrim's Progress, an autobiography they had to rush to get off the press for the open house of Pilgrim's Pride World Headquarters Park. The governor and I visited that day.

"Sure, Rick," I said when he asked me to get a shot of him with Bo in front of the big fountain. "If you'll step over here -"

"Just shoot from where you are," Governor Perry said, and giving critical study to lighting added, "you'll need to use fill flash." How dare his presumption.

Hurling my camera to the ground, I haughtily tossed my ascot over my shoulder as the Nikon shattered.

"I'm an artist!" I said, seething with indignation. "I won't work in conditions like this!" And I stalked away. (I'm making this part up.)

The part of this story about getting my break into televison that day, though, is true.

"You're the guy who shot the bowl game for us last year, right?" said Vice President of Marketing Dan Emery. I was.

"You stick to me like glue," said Vice President Dan. "I want lots of stuff of Bo and the Governor."

I could tell we were getting along.

"Is there a president of marketing?" I asked, cleverly. There wasn't. "What you need to do is hire me to shoot stills the next time you do a TV commercial," I suggested.

That's what a guy should do, Bo said in his book. Look for chances to get new business. Knock on doors and make your pitch when you've got the shot.

For the moment, think of Pilgrim's Pride as a boat, Captain Bo at the helm. Crawl back through the bottleneck of years and there's Bo, dipping his oar in the water, thinking big as he and his brother Aubrey began building the business.

"All we had in the beginning was a two-wheel buggy, a shovel, some Burlap sacks and Bo's big ideas," said Reggie Wallace, who worked for Bo and Aubrey Pilgrim in the day when their feed store partnership launched Pilgrim's Pride.

Captain Bo found sheets and envisioned sails. His boat gathered speed. Time passed.

The new corporate headquarters presently crowns his ship's port complex. Just south of Cypress Creek fleets of transport trucks dock, load, turn and set sail from the biggest freezer in the world. Across U.S. 271 is the new Pilgrim's Pride World Headquarters Park, 175,000 square feet stuffed with admirals continually tuning the deep rumble resonating from the engine room, adjusting pitch and thrust of props.

But enough about Bo.

This story's about the wake his ship throws.

Think of the characters as people on skis, having a big time jumping the wave.

Teresa Ramsey is a slip of a girl. She's also an independent producer, the person responsible for pulling together camera, light and arts crews, wardrobe, makeup and casting for television production.

Earlier this fall, a Dallas-based outfit called The Wolf Agency gave Teresa the script of the next series of Pilgrim's Pride commercials. Go and do, they said. Call when you're ready.

"My mom travels around Texas a lot and when I described what we were looking for she took me to Clifton," Teresa said. "The rolling hills, the Norwegian architecture - it's really pretty country. The director, Gary Smith, and I scouted other great locations, but we kept going back to Clifton. Funny thing, other people started suggesting Clifton without knowing we were looking there. All signs started pointing that way."

Don't be embarrassed, Texas geographers, if you've never heard of Clifton. It's in Bosque County, a hundred or so miles south of the Metroplex, the little-known Norwegian Capital of Texas.

By October's end she'd pulled together the crew, auditioned the talent, booked 40 rooms at the Clifton Best Western, rented a ranch, made arrangements and time slots for her army to take over a series of Main Street locations, booked the catering - think of logistics.

Think of 30-second TV spots that, according to the Association of Independent Commercial Producers, average about $150,000. That's $5,000 a second for a blend of sets, sound and light, everything funneled into a camera lens, everything banking on the magic of a small town.

Royce Graham is a retired tractor salesman. As he tells the story, there he was at home, minding his own business when the phone rang. The lady at the chamber office said she wanted him to audition for some TV people, to look into a camera and read a script for Teresa and Gary.

Before it was over, there was a moment in an otherwise quiet Hill Country night that he was standing in an aging barn amid the created mist of a fantasy dawn, delivering lines for a spot expected to debut for a potential audience of 25 million with the Fox Sports broadcast of Mt. Pleasant's second annual Pilgrim's Pride Bowl Classic.

"This doesn't happen every day in Bosque County," Royce observed.

Overnight, Bo and his company became big news.

Pilgrim's Pride TV Commercial Shot in Rural Setting of Clifton, read the banner headline on page one of the October 28 Clifton Record. Great looking paper, by the way. Check it out at wwwcliftonrecord.com. Click on "full pages of the paper" under "Features."

And right under the story about the high school band's Division 1 rating, there was Bo again, responding to the invitation to make a short speech to the Lions Club.

"I've been in business 58 years," he said. "I can't wrap that up in a few minutes."

It didn't matter.

He could have done a half hour of yo-yo tricks. Like the man said, it's not every day that the Lions get to book a man who gets calls returned from the White House when the Russian government blocks American poultry imports (See One Pilgrim's Progress for details.)

They asked if he'd buy a local poultry outfit, bring new jobs to town. They wanted to know about the TV deal.

"I get to be in the commercials because I don't charge anything extra," Bo said.

They loved it, so he let himself go, told jokes, unleashed "charm and wit," reported The Record.

"Raising 6 million chickens a day, like we do, the biggest problem is catching them," said the co-founder of the world's second-largest poultry outfit, who also said, "I know I'm in cattle country so I'd like to share with you the cure for mad cow disease - poultry."

If they sent you to central casting to pick, say, the burly foreman on a construction crew, Dale Scareberry would fill the bill.

Dale and his son John own the Amarillo-based Lone Star Film & Video. They were the "Directors of Photography" on Teresa's crew.

While John filmed under the live oaks on the lawn of the sprawling ranch house, Dale, the sound team, the light, wardrobe and art people worked out back, setting up a tight shot of a well pump at a water trough. Looking up, Dale saw the director coming.

"Aw, geez," he groaned dramatically, "there's Gary."

Unfazed, Gary shot back a one-liner, completing the couplet. Cue the laugh track.

"The banter comes with the turf," Teresa said. "Each of us thinks we're the most hilarious person on the crew. Truth is, this is really a great, dedicated team and we enjoy working together."

"They were incredible," said Dayna Robinson, whose family will be glued to the TV at kickoff of the bowl game, when sources close to sources told the Clifton Record their commercial should debut. From the back of a vintage pickup arranged with hay bales and apples, sacks of feed, Dayna, daughter Carly and son Seth will be delivering Pilgrim's message to America.

She remembers that Carly was 4 when she said she'd like to be on television.

She home schools her children. She liked the director, Gary, the guy working daylight to dark days shoulder to shoulder with the burly cameraman who enjoys gigging him.

"We want our children to understand that life's so much easier when you're not proud, when you seek humility every day," she said. "Out of the blue, my daughter walked into a wish and Gary is such a gentle and unassuming man, the kind of role model I want my children to see."

My casting call came in an e-mail from Vice President Dan. "Clifton, Texas. October 24 & 25. Are you available? How much?"

That was it for instruction. I just did what I like, which is mentally bolting a camera to my head and living through the lens.

"Single framer!" I was dubbed and ribbed and as awed as anybody from Clifton. I hooked up with Scott Sunday, a three quarter Cherokee, a biker, father and husband, the light man I watched moving undirected, shifting reflectors, changing filters, painting subjects in ways I'd not thought of, but will from here on out.

As opposed to the special effects and parody The Wolf Agency employed with Bo and a flock of Chickens parachuting to earth to deliver fresh products last year with "Jumping In," the upcoming ad spots rise from the earth of Clifton.

The message delivered by the Robinson family will be national in its reach, said The Wolf Agency's Creative Director Vinny Minchillo.

"We want to explain to people that Pilgrim's Pride chicken is produced in small towns all over," Vinny said. "It's all natural and raised with care by people who really want your family to have the best chicken around."

Back on deck, the wake of the ship will soon wash - again - over the National Junior College Athletic Association.

For Mt. Pleasant, one of the handy things about having a Fortune 500 company just across Cypress Creek is having a local school trustee with corporate stroke. When the school superintendent suggested to Clint Rivers that Pilgrim's Pride sponsor a post-season bowl game at the district's new $7 million Sam Parker Stadium, the chief operating officer took it to Bo. Bo called Vice President Dan.

"Let's sponsor a bowl game," Bo said. "Have fun with it."

One of Dan's ways of having fun - and milking the most of opportunity for his marketing division - is television.

"It's one thing to have 5,000 people in the stadium," he said. "It's another to have a television audience of millions." But that was more powerful still, unprecedented in fact, at NJCAA headquarters.

"The broadcast of last year's game showcased junior college athletics on a stage bigger than any in our organization's history," said Executive Director Wayne Baker. "I wish we had 25 sponsors like Pilgrim's Pride and 25 towns like Mt. Pleasant."

Here comes that wake again.

"With network television coverage, more people will see and hear about Mt. Pleasant in three hours that day than will hear about us in all the rest of the days of the year combined," said Mt. Pleasant Daily Tribune Publisher Bob Palmer, who likewise collected a sliver of glory with last year's inaugural bowl. It was the first time since 60's pop icon Ricky Nelson's plane crashed in Sulphur bottom that the Associated Press came clamoring for his photos.

Back on the set, I watched Dale the cameraman. We've got something in common -- we sweat when we shoot. It's not a graceful thing. My jaws and my shoulders ache and I have to pull back, breathe deep, relax and hook up again. That was Dale, straining to make the most of everything all of those people were doing for his lens.

I was there before sunup both days, and long after the sky turned to stars at the end, still thinking about Vinny saying, "do it," when I asked to set up a shot with Royce the retired tractor salesman, to pull Scott Sunday's magic with light to my side. Then it was done and I was loading my car.

"Hey, Single Frame," called a woman's voice from the dark. Angela Gair was sitting on the hood of her car at the edge of the yard, just watching. She'd done her last shot as the sun set, but she'd stayed to eat with everybody, and even when it was over she wasn't ready to leave. She's been in movies, on billboards, in magazines.

"Angela, I've never been around this stuff before--"

"No kidding?"

"You could tell?" I said, trying for incredulous.

"You liked it, didn't you," she said.

"Thought it was a blast."

"Me too," she said and she looked back up the drive where teams of people moved like ants, funneling equipment back into Rod's truck, packing him for the trip home, a midnight surprise for a 4-year-old son who likes dinosaurs.

"I don't think I've ever been on a set quiet like this before," she said, but the lights and the cameras were gone so I couldn't see her expression in the night.

I went up to help load the truck.