It was quite a night at the Serendipity Café in the Magnolia Village where writers, storytellers, musicians and comedians gathered Saturday for the first annual Seattle Stories show.
The event was hosted by the Queen Anne and Magnolia News and was to be a fundraiser for Seattle Milk Fund, a nonprofit that provides daycare assistance and education scholarships, backpacks and school supplies and other day-to-day necessities for school children and mothers.
Myke Folger, editor of News, emceed the evening. After thanking the crowd and Serendipity owners Nanette Baker and Jen Young, he introduced Young's brother, Greg, who is married to Baker, and who is the lead guitarist for the band, American Standard. Before the storytelling began, the band, with Mike Halverson on vocals and Halverson's 14-year-old son, Henry, on guitar, regaled the crowd with renditions of Oasis' "Wonderwall," the Beatles' "Blackbird" and Bob Dylan's "Wagon Wheel."
Folger opened the storytelling with a tale of his Big League baseball days, in which he once told an opposing pitcher that he would hit a homerun all to impress a girl. And he did. Then came p-patch connoisseur Ray Schutte who spoke of his passion for fresh food, old German-Italian chicken recipes and how for years he has been picking his lettuce from his garden plot at the Interbay P-Patch.
Veteran News columnist Dennis Wilken took the microphone next and wowed the crowd with an amusing tale of the day he got his draft notice in the mail and how he parlayed that into the beginnings of a career in writing. Wilken's sense of humor and penchant for remembering the smallest detail from events that took place some 30 years ago went far with audience members.
News columnist Nicole Franklin, who lives in Magnolia, took the stage next and told how she and a friend drove a moving van from New Jersey to Seattle some years ago and ran into strange characters along the way. In South Dakota, they unwittingly stopped in Sturgis at the height of that town's annual Harley-Davidson biker rally. A brush with the Hells Angels had them frazzled and freaked out.
American Standard's Halverson came on next and transported listeners to a middle-school dance in 1975. He said the most popular and "experienced" girl in the school danced with him, liked his moves and uttered, "boogie!" That sent up gales of laughter in Serendipity.
When in doubt, you have to follow your heart and take a chance. That's exactly what Garth Stein did after he wrote his New York Times best seller, "The Art of Racing in the Rain." His agent at the time hated the idea of a book told from a dog's perspective. But Stein believed in it so much that he fired the agent and got himself another. That agent, Stein said, was crying after he read the book - he was the ideal agent. The rest was history.
Professional comedians Kevin Hyder and Jessica Strauss followed. Hyder conjured a true story about how he had accidentally pinned himself between his car and a chain-link fence. Because this took place under the rush of cars along the viaduct, nobody could hear his pleas for help. Eventually, a woman came to his aid and backed the car away. Police, he said, kept their laughter at bay while writing out the report.
As Strauss told the tale of her once-upon-a-time drug use, the Magnolia crowd was unsure how to react. But Strauss was quick to make light of what at the time was a difficult and perhaps painful time in her life.
The evening drew to a close when Magnolia's own, Gary McDaniel, talked about his multiple treks from Detroit to Seattle.
Cash donations from Seattle Stories were given to the Seattle Milk Fund. This was the first Seattle Stories event and Folger is considering making it a quarterly event and varying the locations.
- News Staff
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