Editing C. W. McCall (section)

==Advertising==
In 1973, while working for [[Bozell|Bozell & Jacobs]], Fries created a television advertising campaign for Old Home Bread. The bread was trucked across the Midwest from the Metz Baking Company plant in [[Sioux City, Iowa]]. As the big [[semi-trailer truck]]s carrying the [[Old Home Bread]] logo were a familiar sight on the highway, this suggested a trucking theme. 

The advertisements were narrated by a trucker named "C.W. McCall," played by Jim Finlayson.  The name was inspired by ''[[McCall's]]'' magazine, which Fries had on his desk at the time. A [[James Garner]] movie, ''[[Cash McCall]]'', was also an influence. To complete the name, Fries added initials, shown embroidered on the trucker's shirt, and chose "C. W." for [[country and western]].<ref name=AA>{{citation |pages=79–81 |title=The All-American Truck Stop Cookbook |year=2002 |isbn=9781418557829 |publisher=Thomas Nelson}}</ref>

In each commercial, the trucker's mission was to deliver a load of Old Home Bread to the Old Home Café, whose name expanded over time to become the "Old Home Fill 'Er Up An' Keep On a-Truckin' Café".  There, a waitress named Mavis (played by Jean McBride Capps as a Marilyn Monroe bombshell) awaited the bread delivery.  McCall would later joke that Capps "was built like a couple of cub scouts trying to put up a Sears Roebuck pup tent."<ref>"Old Home Saga (with Commercials 1-12)", retrieved from Youtube.com on July 28 2024 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlSC_MYQP8M</ref> 
The character Mavis was named after a real waitress at the White Spot café in Audubon where Fries grew up.<ref name=1970scraze>{{Cite web |last=Ligo |first=Joe |date=May 19, 2021 |title=The 1970s Trucking Craze Can Be Traced Back to a Regional TV Commercial for Bread |url=https://www.thedrive.com/news/40634/the-1970s-trucking-craze-can-be-traced-back-to-a-regional-tv-commercial-for-bread |access-date=December 12, 2023 |website=The Drive |language=en}}</ref>  At the end of the ad campaign of twelve different spots, the C.W. McCall character proposes marriage to Mavis, who accepts.

Each commercial featured a distinctive country spoken-word patter song full of folksy trucker jargon. Fries wrote the [[lyrics]] and recorded the vocals; [[Chip Davis]], who wrote [[jingle]]s at Bozell & Jacobs, composed the musical accompaniment. These pieces strongly foreshadowed, both in style and structure, the musical releases Fries would soon create as his C.W. McCall musician character.

The commercial won a [[Clio Award]].