Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Spring nears and it arrives again.
The annual Uniontown Sausage Feed is Sunday, and Ken Oenning is again at the helm.
“Once more,” he said, “13th year.”
Wasn’t it the 14th?
“Thirteen or 14,” he said. “After you get so old you start to forget how many it’s been.”
Every year, the Tuesday before the event, Oenning gets in his half-ton pickup and drives to Lewiston to pick up the sausage.
“Shoulder butts,” he said. “Shoulder loins is what they call them now. Pork shoulders is what they are.”
He heads back up the grade with 1,800 pounds of meat in 70-pound boxes.
It sits in his pickup bed in his garage overnight.
Casings are delivered to the Uniontown Community Center building the next morning for the making of the sausage by volunteers.
“They all show up Wednesday morning,” Oenning said. “I don’t even have to call any of them.”
On Thursday, he drives back down to Lewiston to a URM distribution center for sauerkraut, beans, potatoes, applesauce, butter and whipped cream.
“Big cans, buckets and boxes,” he said.
He may get it all Thursday or have to return for one more trip Friday.
“Depends on how ambitious I am,” he said.
At the community hall, the dishes are stacked in the downstairs cupboards ready to be pulled out for another year.
In 2015, volunteers served 1,900 people. The record is 2,400.
On Sunday morning, the day of the event, Uniontown Mayor Dave Jacobs drives his van to Dissmore’s in Pullman to fill it up with bakery rolls.
At the community center, Oenning is on duty from 8 a.m. to about 9 p.m.
There are no meal breaks.
“I grab a mouthful here and there,” he said.
While adults spoon and slice and pull and pour, grade school kids help at the tables, clearing plates, delivering beverages and more.
“We’d be lost without those kids,” Oenning said.
As the line of customers slinks in from the building’s entry doors in front, then down the hall to the ticket window into the gym, around the perimeter and down a flight of stairs to the dining room, others go straight to a pick-up window for a box meal to go.
“That’s super, that’s slick,” said Oenning of the option added eight years ago.
All proceeds of the Sausage Feed go to the maintenance of the community building.
“We need to do some work on the roof,” Oenning said.
Pies
Janet Murai runs the pies.
For how long?
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe 30 years I’ve done it, I’m not sure.”
Born three months before the first Uniontown Sausage Feed, she grew up on a farm outside of town, her father made sausage and her mother cut pies, the late Clifford and Loretta Wolf.
Murai brings in a selection every year, both acquired and baked herself.
“This year we’re aiming for 230 pies, and I think we’ve got that,” she said.
Part of the total will be 30-35 Washington nut pies, which are walnut pies, from nuts grown on trees of people Murai knows.
She cures the nuts and shells them in preparation.
On Thursday and Friday, she and a group of volunteers make the pies at the community center – baking 30 at once in five ovens - shifting them into tall, glass-door coolers for the dairy-based pies and later the purchased fruit pies are set in the “cold room” to thaw.
“It’s a room in the back that’s always colder than anywhere else,” Murai said.
The pies which are bought come from Lewiston’s Franz/Snyder Bakery and Grocery Outlet.
On Friday and Saturday, volunteers cut pies.
On the day of the event, 80 volunteers will work the kitchen in three shifts.
That morning, guests will arrive to an array of selections on the pie list, with some unlisted; walnut, apple, coconut cream, cherry, marionberry, pumpkin, sour cream lemon, mixed berry, banana cream and chocolate cream.
Early in the day, the pie types organizers don’t have enough of to include on the list are mixed in as options.
Diners choose a piece from a tray carried by a crew of fifth and sixth-grade students who act as servers.
The wildcard pies are served early in order to not run out of listed choices later in the day.
If any pies remain, Murai sells them at-cost to patrons and volunteers in the last hour of the event.
By the end of the night, following cleanup, Murai and her husband will sit down to eat a takeout sausage meal, and another year of the Uniontown Sausage Feed will be marked.
“It’s tradition,” she said.
Particulars
The event runs Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The all-you-can-eat meal is on a first-come, first-served basis, or in a box to go. The menu includes sausage from a secret recipe, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, applesauce, pie and beverages. Tickets are available at the door; $12 for adults, kids age 6 to 12 are $8 and under-6 $2.
The barbershop quartet Four Names in a Hat will perform for guests waiting in line.
Those wanting takeout orders of 10 or more are asked to call ahead at (509) 229-3805.
The beer garden operates upstairs in a room off the balcony over the old gym. Beverages are served from an ice-filled trough; Coors Light, Miller High Life and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
The beer is sold separately. To-go meals may be brought up to the beer garden.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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