ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

Liberal’s extensive history includes being named the broomcorn capital of the world and agriculture, and an upcoming Seward County Historical Society event will be bringing both of those together.

The Seward County Historical Society will be hosting "Burgers and Broomcorn" at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 22 on the Coronado Museum grounds at 567 E. Cedar Street. Guests will be able to enjoy burgers outside Bob’s Diner (while helping raise money for a new paint job) and hear from authors Steve Doner and Kent Brooks as they speak about their new book, Broomcorn on the High Plains: A Photographic Record. Museum Director Nathan Dowell said he and staff are excited about the upcoming event.

“We are very happy and proud to have Bob's Diner on our campus. We know this is a building that means a lot to many people,” Dowell said. “Beyond that, Valentine Diners in general are such an important piece of Kansas history that we absolutely feel like we need to take that final step of getting it properly painted to do justice not just to what this building means to the local community, but also to what it means for the wider history of diners. The fundraiser is going to have a few different components. We are going to be serving everyone burgers, National Beef was very kind to provide some beef for this, so we will be serving everyone burgers right outside of Bob's Diner. Bob's Diner will be open, and people can go in and take a look at it. But we are also going to have two different broomcorn experts who recently published a book on it, and they will be coming by to speak about broomcorn. Broomcorn is an area Liberal very briefly specialized in, and there was a brief period around the turn of the century where we called ourselves the broomcorn capital of the world. We have a lot of cool photos from that time as a broomcorn market, and we also have quite a few pieces of broomcorn machinery that have been in storage for a while, so we'll also open up that storage building.”

When it came to planning, Dowell said everything fell together rather easily.

“This actually began as two separate events. We knew we wanted to do something with burgers to raise money for Bob’s Diner, and we knew with the release of this book, and because Lydia has been in contact with these two authors, we knew we really wanted to do something to talk about broomcorn,” Dowell said. “At a certain point, as we were discussing the two, we ultimately decided, let's put them together. We knew we wanted to have some kind of historical program to really teach people as part of the fundraiser. Once we realized that we could just make it one big event, everything really snapped together pretty quickly.”

Dowell said he hopes to see a lot of members of the community at the event.

“We know the diner means a lot to so many people around here, and we also know some people have come by and essentially said ‘Oh, it's a shame it's not painted up.’ This is a chance to do something about that,” Dowell said. “This is an active opportunity to finally get it painted up in the way it deserves. So, for everyone who cares about Bob's Diner, this is your chance to participate. We are going to be funding it in two different ways – we will be accepting free will chance to participate in the event, but we are also going to be raffling off four different items. If you’re unable to attend but still want to contribute, if you want to do a regular donation, you can come in and speak to me anytime, and we also have a donation box up front.”

While the event is meant to be fun, Dowell said he hopes it’s also a bit of a history lesson for attendees.

“The broomcorn will be the big educational topic, and I'm excited to see people engage with that,” Dowell said. “We all know what a broom is, and yet the idea that back in the day this crop on the end of that broom was an entire industry in and of itself. It's rather niche, but it also says a lot about kind of the mindset of these towns out here, because a lot of these towns, especially before they switched over to winter wheat, they were experimenting with so many different crops, just to find the one that would work for them. With broomcorn, it's so fascinating because not only can you what it looks like in the finished product on a broom, but you can see all of the machinery it took to create that. You can hear about Liberal’s time as a market. You can see photos, and through this book, it has so many photos and so many tales that it shows just how much effort went into something we think of as relatively simple, and that's a lesson that's true of broom porn, but it can be applied to just about anything.”

Dowell said he has high expectations for the evening.

“We hope this is something that can get a lot of people to come down, get a burger, learn about a piece of history you may not know about. That alone, I think, should really appeal to our core base of people who really support the museum,” Dowell said. “But the fact that it is additionally going towards Bob's Diner, the fact that we are opening up our building so everyone can see this broomcorn machinery and hear directly about how it would have been used back in the day, what it was about this crop that was so important. We're combining a lot of different things that each individually could interest people, and I'm hoping that makes it pretty successful. I'm hoping that it's really something unique. It's really something we can only do as the historical society, and I'm hoping that the public is pretty interested in that.”