Connecting the dots between Scott Walker, Happy Chef and a very big umpire in Ryan

When you're running for president, or testing the waters, the last thing you want to come off as is some big stiff, standing like a statue with a dopey grin plastered across your face.

You don't want to keep repeating the same dull message as if it's a recording. Waving a big spoon over your head might also strike would-be caucusgoers as odd.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker clearly appears to know this. And I'm betting he learned it at Happy Chef.

Allow me to explain.

During a recent stop in Cedar Rapids, Walker played up his Iowa ties. As a boy, he lived in Plainfield, Iowa, for about eight years while his dad worked as a minister in town. His state representative back in the day was Chuck Grassley. Yep, that farmer with no law degree.

Walker did not break into the 'Tall Corn Song” or start tossing tenderloins as big as your head into the crowd like flying discs, but it's still early.

He's certainly not the first caucus candidate to play up any and all Iowa connections. In 2012, former Minnesota U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann endlessly pointed out that she was born in Waterloo. The hometown of John Wayne, she said. Actually, it's serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Whoops.

So hopefuls tug our Iowa heartstrings. But Walker is the first candidate I know of to play the Happy Chef card.

Growing up in the upper Midwest in the '70s, you may have found yourself sitting inside a Happy Chef, a Minnesota-based family restaurant chain, faced with a large stack of pancakes. And yes, your eyes were bigger than your stomach. That's the last time we waste money on pancakes for you, Mr. Sticky Hands.

But the big attraction was outside. Many of the restaurants featured a very large statue of a jaunty Happy Chef, grinning broadly, seemingly frozen in mid jig, thrusting a massive spoon skyward.

And that's not all. At the base of the statue there was a button. If you pressed it, and the dang thing wasn't out of order, the chef talked. It was awesome and a little creepy. Kind of like my dad's friend who used to show up outside our sliding glass door on Christmas Eve in a Santa suit.

What did the chef say? I can't remember. Probably something about the weather. That's what strangers talk about in the Midwest.

Walker is a button-pusher from way back.

'I thought that Happy Chef was talking just to me,” Walker told his Cedar Rapids audience.

'Me too!” I thought.

Don't judge. We had no smartphones, iPods or flip down video screens. We searched for simpler pastimes, and giant roadside statues. If only Happy Chef had met that big Pocahontas along Highway 3 in Pocahontas.

So I left Walker's event with some burning questions.

Did he borrow his foreign policy tagline, 'Take them out before they take us out,” from Vin Diesel?

And what ever happened to all those grinning Happy Chefs?

After some online searching, I discovered that the only Happy Chef statue still on duty is in front of the chain's original Mankato location.

But a few other chefs bravely faced the hard reality of diminishing global demand for giant cooks, retooled and changed careers. One of them is just a short drive up Highway 13.

That's 'Ryan's Hope,” a former Cedar Rapids Happy Chef statue now working as Iowa's, if not the world's, largest umpire. He watches over a ball diamond in Ryan, a town in Delaware County. An umpire's grimace has replaced his grin. His chef hat was switched out for a cap and mask. His spoon is now a thumb, emphatically, and perpetually, calling all of us 'Out!”

Ryan City Clerk Natalie Tucker was gracious enough to share some history chronicling Ryan's move to Ryan.

According to a 1981 clipping Tucker sent to me written by longtime former Gazette reporter Dick Hogan, the statue once stood at I-380 and 33rd Avenue. His owner, Pat McElliott, searched for someone to take the chef off his hands, and after a Gazette story, he had many offers.

A woman 'with a heavy German accent” wanted to put him in the middle of a field holding an American flag. A guy called hoping to cut the chef in half, bury it in the ground and turn it into a swimming pool.

But then Rev. Matthew Beelner of St. Patrick's Church in Ryan called with the umpire idea. Seventeen strong men hoisted the Chef on to a flatbed trailer and hauled it to Ryan.

I checked big Ryan out this past week, driving to his perch at the very end of the town's Main Street. The only traffic was a guy riding his lawn mower.

Two large dogs, a German shepherd, with no heavy accent, and his pal, welcomed me from a nearby backyard. They welcomed me very loudly the entire time I shot some photos. But, hey, barking at the umpire is a baseball tradition.

Big Ryan is showing some wear after all these innings. But the good news is community members have raised more than $4,000 to fix him up, and Tucker said work should begin this month.

'Our mayor actually owns the local bar-restaurant in town and they did a steak fry one night for it,” Tucker said. 'It was just word-of-mouth. Since the steak fry there's been a lot of people who heard about it so they've come in and made donations.”

Good for Ryan, the town and the statue. Long may he grimace.

For the rest of you, be very wary of any plastic, smiling presidential candidates waving spoons. And never be afraid to order more pancakes than you can eat. That's how the Happy Chef would have wanted it.

l Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com