My visits to the 'world’s largest kitchen' and 'world’s largest neighborhood bar'
Without leaving Des Moines, and thanks to the examples of two friends, I was reminded of the subtle power of those striving to bring us together.
One was a documentary film premiere and the other was a ballpark memorial, but both events offered reminders of the empathy, joy, and sense of community we too often neglect in our daily lives.
Slices of life at the ‘Pieowa’ premiere
For one evening, Varsity Cinema became the world’s largest kitchen.
I’ll explain the analogy momentarily.
Two years ago, Beth Howard embarked on an ambitious project to produce her own documentary film about pie. She was a newcomer to filmmaking, armed with an iPhone and a gaggle of talented collaborators. Her aim was cultural as much as culinary.
Beth’s work for the last 15 years—selling pies, teaching pie-baking, authoring memoirs and cookbooks, leading humanitarian outreach with pie and much more—has consistently focused on pie as perhaps the tastiest and most ubiquitous presence in our lives to bring neighbors together and strengthen community ties.
So, last week the Varsity hosted the Des Moines premiere of her debut documentary, “Pieowa: A Piece of America.” Appropriately enough, the event filled the theater and fostered a real sense of community. Step aside, popcorn: After the screening and Q&A session, the audience spilled out into the lobby and onto the sidewalk to fork slices of homemade pie served by some of the Iowa bakers featured in the film.
The film traces the history of pie—across cultures—from antiquity to today.
It also follows Beth’s idiosyncratic path around Iowa in relation to pie:
She shared her first slices of pie with her father in her native Ottumwa at legendary diner the Canteen Lunch in the Alley—a century-old restaurant so cherished that the city built a parking garage around it rather than raze it.
She qualifies as the final resident of the American Gothic House in Eldon, before it was converted into a full-time museum. She even opened her Pitchfork Pie Stand there.
Her film explores the pie contests of the Iowa State Fair, where Beth served as a pie judge.
The Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) is an epic flock of tens of thousands of pedalers where pie is arguably the signature food (followed closely by pork chops, bananas, ice cream, and beer). Beth has ridden multiple RAGBRAIs. In 2012 she also let me borrow her “pie van” as my family bicycle team’s support vehicle. While the team spent the day on the road, our driver, a locksmith from Fairfield, practiced transcendental meditation and brewed sun tea in the van. We enjoyed a wonderful meal featuring some of Beth’s pies during our overnight stop in Marshalltown, where the team dined and slept in the basement of a former church that had been converted into a homeless shelter. (I’m not making this up. Bicycles and pie both seem to bring out the quirkiness in life.)
Beth’s current headquarters is rural Donnellson on the southeast Iowa family farm of her partner, Doug Seyb. The film does a wonderful job of exploring the local small-town pie culture there established by generations of “church ladies.”
Luminaries such as actor Tom Arnold, journalist Chuck “Iowa Boy” Offenburger, chef George Formaro, small business owner Rachelle Long, and National Public Radio broadcaster Scott Horsley bring all sorts of perspectives to pie through their interviews in the film.
What I mean about the Varsity becoming a kitchen is that the premiere felt as if all few hundred of us were crammed into a residential kitchen—where everybody seems to gravitate during any house party—as pies, fresh from the oven, cooled on a nearby counter.
Whether it’s the therapeutic craft of baking a pie from scratch or the sacrament of sharing one with strangers who soon become friends, here’s a film to remind us that what unites us is stronger that what divides us—even if we spend most of our time obsessing over the latter.
Keep tabs on Beth’s “Pieowa” webpage for upcoming screenings.
For it’s one, two, three toasts to Bryce at the old ballgame
For one afternoon, Principal Park was transformed into the world’s largest neighborhood bar.
Hundreds of mourners flocked to the home of the Iowa Cubs Saturday for a memorial to beloved sport journalist Bryce Miller. The reporter, editor, and columnist spent 15 or so years of his 35-year career at the Des Moines Register, where I worked with him, and finished his storied run with a decade at the San Diego Union-Tribune.
He died March 22 at age 56 after a two-year struggle with bladder cancer that never robbed him of his signature wit.
Four eulogies traced the basic progression of Bryce’s life and career, from hometown roots in Redfield, Iowa, to journalism school and newsroom jobs in Iowa City, to his run in Des Moines, and his final adventures in San Diego.
But that barely suggests the footprints Bryce left all over the globe. He covered six Olympics and all manner of college and professional sports tournaments and championships. He was a voter for the Heisman Trophy and Wooden Award. He crisscrossed continents whether he was reporting, fishing, or celebrating birthdays and friendships.
Each ballpark eulogy ended with a toast to Bryce—plus an opening tallboy tribute led by his mother, Bea Winters. The afternoon’s quips and memories included:
“It’s kind of ironic he was a sportswriter,” said childhood friend Robey Orewiler. “He had no athletic ability.”
Longtime friend, Des Moines sports broadcaster Keith Murphy, said that Bryce was somebody who always said “yes.” “He said yes to now. He said yes to fun. He said yes to life.”
Friend Bill Thompson from San Diego said Bryce was in search of four key qualities when deciding where he would settle in southern California:
A walkable neighborhood.
A cool bar.
Good friends.
A community.
Bryce’s community of family and friends showed strength in numbers Saturday and turned the ballpark into the sort of cool bar he would’ve enjoyed.
Consistent with everything I heard at the memorial (and watched in a wonderful 12-minute video montage of Bryce on the giant outfield screen), I’ll always remember his irrepressible enthusiasm. I don’t think I’ve ever watched any journalist transition so seamlessly between roles as a diligent reporter, inspiring editor, and ingenious columnist.
This wasn’t my first ballpark memorial for a friend and fellow journalist. As I sat in the stands Saturday, gazing at the golden dome of the Iowa Capitol on the horizon, I was reminded of a similar gathering in 2006 for late Register columnist Rob Borsellino—another personality whose work and spirit demanded the scale.
Bryce’s community will carry on through a Cancer for College fund in his memory, providing needs-based scholarships to cancer survivors who want to pursue a career as a writer or journalist.
Meanwhile, I can almost hear Bryce still cheering for his beloved Chicago Cubs—and for the fortunes of all those he left behind.
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Enjoyed the read. Where else can I see Pieowa?