Boy is Wienermobile winner!

“Here's the link with story pasted below from Star Tribune. (I think you'd have to register to read otherwise...)

http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5098146.html

"To fill boy's wish, it's wiener takes all" 
Jill Burcum,  Star Tribune
November 22, 2004

CLARKFIELD, MINN. -- As contests go, the one 10-year-old Logan Abrego, of Worthington, won this fall wasn't especially glamorous. Or lucrative.
There was no Caribbean cruise. No fabulous sports car wrapped in a bow. No former talk-show sidekick showing up at the door with a megacheck.
Not that it mattered when the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile pulled up to pick up Logan and his parents early Sunday in southwestern Minnesota. Logan's starry eyes and the broad grin spreading across his freckled face said it all.
When you're 10, does it get any better than having a 27-foot-long, hot-dog-shaped vehicle at your disposal for the day?
"Cool," Logan said, never taking his eyes off the just-arrived Wienermobile. "Cool."
The Wienermobile, the Wisconsin meatpacker's famous promotional tool, would soon whisk Logan and his parents, Jeremy and Shellie Abrego, to Minneapolis for VIP seating at the Minnesota Vikings-Detroit Lions game -- a perk that was part of the prize.

Essay winner
Brian Peterson
Star Tribune
But as exciting as it was, the day was a bittersweet one for the family.
Logan was one of 50 kids nationwide -- and the only one in the Midwest -- to win use of the Wienermobile for a day in Oscar Mayer's "Oh I Wish ..." essay contest. After seeing a flier in the grocery store last summer, the fifth-grader told the company in 50 words or less what he'd do if he could go for a ride in the Wienermobile.
"I would go to the nursing home to pick up my grandmother and then drive her to the Twins game because she is special and she enjoys the Minnesota Twins."
The grandma in the essay is actually Logan's beloved great-grandmother, 92-year-old Gert Olson, a resident of the nursing home in the tiny Yellow Medicine County town of Clarkfield, population 900. And while the contest results were announced too late for a Twins game, Logan thought his vivacious, fun-loving great-granny would get a kick out of riding around in a giant hot dog.
But a week ago, Olson fell and fractured her pelvis. Her health deteriorated rapidly, and she's now in a hospice unit in Montevideo, according to her daughter and Logan's grandmother, Linda Roder of rural Montevideo.
Olson, though, knew about her great-grandson's big win.
"She was so excited. She kept saying 'Oh my goodness, Oh my goodness,' " Roder said.
She also told her family to enjoy the prize, even if she couldn't.
Logan and his family decided to share their fun with Olson's friends at the Clarkfield Care Center, which is about 15 miles southwest of Montevideo. On Sunday morning, the Abregos and several dozen elderly care center residents were waiting at the windows when the Wienermobile pulled up around 7 a.m.
"Worth getting up for," said Bea Forsberg, 87.
"Just the tops!" said Pat Riley, 70. "Us older people just don't get out to see this famous stuff."
The waiting crowd also included Clarkfield's newly elected mayor, Dan Jahn. He thought the Wienermobile just might be the town's most famous visitor to date.
"We get a lot of tornadoes, but we don't get any celebrities," Jahn said.
Logan was the first to check out the Wienermobile's giant fiberglass hot dog and the vehicle's souped-up interior, which is about as roomy as a small RV.
He said little but smiled nonstop as he checked out the vehicle's six seats, the hot-dog-shaped instrument panel on the dash and colorful, splotched carpeting designed to look like someone ordered it with all the fixings.
His great-grandma would approve, Logan quickly decided.
"She'd be pretty amazed," he said.
His brother, Trenton, 7, and sister, Rya, 6, could barely contain their glee as they clambered aboard for a quick ride around Clarkfield before Logan and his parents left for the Twin Cities.
"So you think you could eat a hot dog this big?" asked driver Michael McCloskey.
"NO!" the two yelled.
Residents of the Clarkfield Care Center stayed rapt at the windows as the Wienermobile pulled away and headed north, then east to the Twin Cities on Hwy. 7 for a three-hour ride to the football game. As part of the contest, Logan was given up to $5,000 to fulfill a wish.
He chose the Vikings game "because I'd never been to one before."
Shy even on normal days, Logan seemed a bit overwhelmed early on by all the hot-dog hubbub.
But after entering the Twin Cities to a chorus of honks and waves and people in other vehicles holding up camera-equipped cell phones to snap the Wienermobile's photo, he loosened up and began to relish his celebrity.
Stepping out into the pre-game party's VIP area, Logan even hammed it up for amateur and professional photographers clicking away.
So was it the best day of his life? "Yup," he said. "Yup."”

“How fun! :-D
what a great story in the midst of all of the downer stories I've read today...

Thanks for sharing Lizs”

“only in minnesota

wasnt this a deleted scene from "fargo"?”

“No lie. I saw the Weinermobile on campus a few weeks ago. Made my heart skip a beat! Hadn't seen it since I was a kid.

So I checked it out! This is what I found.
Pic:
”

“Doesn't every boy want a big weiner?”

“Does anybody remember the Dave Barry column from about 10 years ago when he got the use of the Weinermobile and went to his son's school to pick him up? Of course his son was mortified, he was still in the "My mom and dad live to embarrass me" phase.”

“It's not a [i]PHASE[i] for me, it's been a reality for the past 50 years.”

“I understand completely, Mark...lol...I'm convinced my mother lives for no other reason than to cause me trouble.”

“I thought that was what parents were for?!”

“Yep, and that is also why rest homes were invented...”

“


Molchan was laid to rest to the accompaniment of solemn prayers delivered in Slovenian by clergy from St. Michael Byzantine Catholic Church.

But not before the 50 or so people at the Calumet Park Cemetery grave site broke into a chorus of the company theme song, "I'd love to a be an Oscar Mayer wiener," followed by a few quick blasts on miniature, hot-dog shaped whistles handed out to the crowd.

Not your typical burial, but Molchan would've loved it, a bystander said.

The 82-year-old Hobart man died Tuesday, a veteran of 36 years with Oscar Mayer. He portrayed company mascot Little Oscar, often at the wheel of the hot-dog shaped Wienermobile.

http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2005/04/17/news/lake_county/273ec5a406102bff86256fe5007c89b0.txt”

“how sweeeeet! LOL!”

“That's very close to my house.

In Chicago last week I saw the Wienermobile. They must have decided to incorporate Chicago into their route since they were so close. Anyway, I had the light to walk across the street, and the Wienermobile was turning left and nearly sideswiped me.”

“Did they bury him in a giant bun?”

“I have some of those little whistles.

Oh, I wish I was an Oscar Mayer weiner
That is what I'd really like to be
'Cause if I was an Oscar Mayer weiner
Everyone would be in love with me”