WORD ON THE STREET: A ‘Sumner Home Companion’?

Published 12:59 pm Monday, April 5, 2010

You may have noticed I’m rather fond of writing about what brings folks to downtown Sumner. But this week, I’m going to write about taking downtown Sumner to some folks in Seattle that you may have heard of: Tom Douglas, a chef and Seattle restaurant owner who also appeared on the popular “Iron Chef” TV show, and Garrison Keillor, the popular and well-known creator of the famous “Prairie Home Companion” radio show.

The two hosted a recent benefit at the Hotel Andra where they mingled with the crowd, interviewed each other on stage and then – my favorite part – took questions from the audience.

I didn’t just show up at this soiree. No siree! We created a Rhubarb Pie Kit to take to the two gentlemen as Sumner souvenirs. The kits consisted of a wooden crate with our retro rhubarb crate labels affixed to the ends, a glass pie plate, some baker’s sugar, fresh rhubarb from the Washington Rhubarb Growers Association and of course, some good, old-fashioned recipe cards for rhubarb pies and custards.

We enlisted the help of the hostesses at the event to deliver the pie kits and then strategically “mingled” with the crowd until we were able to corner both Mr. Keillor and Mr. Douglas, shake their hands, tell them we were from the Rhubarb Pie Capital and that we had brought them pie kits. To Mr. Douglas we suggested that he should consider procuring all his rhubarb from Sumner. When we announced to Mr. Keillor that Sumner was the Rhubarb Pie Capital, he asked with a twinkle in his eye why folks would purposely grow something they couldn’t get rid of in Michigan.

I waited patiently during the interview part of the program and quickly raised my hand when they got to the Q&A portion of the evening. I asked Mr. Keillor if he personally wrote the lyrics for his Beeboparhubarb Rhubarb Pie song and told him there were six of us in the audience who had come to see him from a small town called Sumner, about 35 minutes south of Seattle. To which he clearly and concisely said in his uniquely Midwestern drawl, “Sumner? Isn’t Sumner the Rhubarb Pie Capital of the World?”

Simultaneously, Mr. Douglas turned to his rhubarb pie kit on stage and pulled out the bundle of freshly cut rhubarb that we had brought but never dared dream would end up on stage with these two well known personalities as a topic of conversation.

To be honest, I didn’t hear too much more of what they said after that. I was concentrating on not getting up to do a happy dance in the aisle, especially since I was sitting in the front row.

The moral of this story is that it really isn’t too hard to get folks’ attention when you mention rhubarb pie. And then it’s just an easy hop, skip and a jump to convince them it’s a whole lotta fun to spend some time in Sumner. I just love my job!