He Provides Missing Links

The real thing, that’s what Ken Beatty wanted. No smokies. No turkey franks. Bratwurst. Good Bavarian white sausage dotted with parsley and heated in beer. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Ken pats his belly, the round receptacle that proves his love of beer and bratwurst. A windstorm has blitzed power to his house, so he grills his sausages on his deck.

“I couldn’t make them better,” he says, squirting a squiggle of sweet mustard atop the plump sausage.

Ken and his Bavarian wife, Elke, didn’t leave California for Hayden Lake two years ago to sell bratwurst.

Ken was retired from police and postal work.

He arrived hungry, ready to sink his teeth into the succulent sausage he grew to love in Germany 10 years ago.

But true bratwurst was not in Coeur d’Alene.

“I hated the bratwurst I tried,” he says. “The aftertaste, salt, chemicals …”

A butcher friend steered Ken to Seattle distributors of the authentic product. Ken bought enough mild white sausages and spicier red sausages to titillate his neighbors’ palates. They wanted more.

So, Ken erected a stand near the Silver Lake Mall. That is where he met Hugo, who wanted spicy liverwurst, Edie who craved teewurst, Jeff who had to have two bratwursts a week and a man in a 1930s roadster who was obsessed with Elke’s aromatic sauerkraut.

Diners told Ken of childhood memories the subtle white sausage stirred in them, of their U.S. Army time in Germany, of travels along the Danube and the Rhine.

Ken added pickles and a variety of mustards to his menu, the real Gummi bears, the Polish sausages. He earned enough to cover costs but not to grow.

So, each year he closes his stand in the winter and reopens at his leisure in the spring. He calls himself the “wurst” man in town, and he is. He takes orders year round.

“I know the money will come,” he says, trying to keep the bratwurst juices from his beard. “In the meantime, I’m having fun. I have more fun at work than at home.”

Hit the lights

Remember Barbara White, the Gem woman who lavishly decorated her house for Christmas despite her crippling arthritis? She won third place in Wallace’s decorating contest, but declined the award after finding out she wasn’t really eligible.

The contest was for Wallace residents only, but the judges made an exception for Barbara because she’d won so many times in the past.

The good news is Barbara finally saw her glistening hillside from the road. “Despite knowing what was missing, I gloried in the beauty of it,” she says. “I hope everyone who sees it feels as I did and remembers its brilliance and message of peace, hope and love throughout the year.”

Never too old

At Lake City High’s junior prom earlier this month, suspicious characters with caps pulled down over their faces sneaked through the front door and up the stairs throughout the night.

Principal John Brumley did nothing to stop them. He just waved and smiled and concentrated on taking tickets from the teenagers in tuxes and frills.

Turns out, the scruffy people were parents and teachers drinking in the magic of the ground floor scene from the protective darkness of the second floor balcony.

Just like little kids at an adult party …

Maybe next year

1996 could be the year Coeur d’Alene goes for the public ice rink or maybe a community pool.

Sandpoint could re-embrace its Festival or Post Falls could build a theater for its fast-growing arts community.

What do you want to see happen next year?

Get you bids into Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene 83814; FAX to 765-7149; or call 765-7128.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo