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| Jerry Mumma |
Jerry Mumma of Rich Hill likes auctions. Not just any auction- but
pie auctions in particular. In fact, just last year he bid on a strawberry-rhubarb pie, won it, put it
back into the auction and won it again.
Total cost to Jerry? $3,300.00. The first time he had it for $700...
A crazy man? No. In fact, Jerry is just a strong supporter of his community and #1 fan of the pie baker (and granddaughter) Jara Mumma of Rich Hill Mo.
Jerry came back this year and did it again- top dollar was $3,100.00 for a peanut-butter banana pie on a Hammond Pretzel crust. And Jerry didn't even get a bite of it. “I tell you what, my wife cut it up in little bitty pieces and handed it out to everybody who wanted to try it,” Jerry said. “She just passed it out to people who were bidding against me.”
You might think Jerry Mumma does all this just to show support his of granddaughter, but that's not the whole story.
"The way I understand it, what the [town’s Fourth of July] committee gets off this pie auction, they invest in next year’s Fourth of July," Jerry Mumma said. The four-day festival involves inviting big-name bands to town. "They had the Kentucky Headhunters this year, and it didn’t cost you nothing to go up there and listen to them."
This is how Mumma gives back to the community he is proud to be a part of.
On the other hand, auctioneer Larry Hacker seized the opportunity to officially record the auction just in case it might be a record breaker. And it was. Jara's peanut butter banana pie beat the existing record by almost $1,200.00 set in Britain.
But Jerry didn’t seem to care about any world record.
"I wasn’t paying attention to it," Mumma said. "Doesn’t matter much. I don’t care. Just as long as the community’s happy and they get along."
According to Larry Hacker, the grand total for this year's pie auction raised more than $10,000.
Will Jerry Mumma be back for next year's pie auction? We're pretty sure he will. After all, he really, really likes pie auctions...
