Bliss on a Stick
Many regular attendees of the Old Settler’s Celebration will tell you that the event just wouldn’t be the same without their favorite food—Grange Pups, a corn-dog-like concoction sold at the food booth run by the Morning Grange of Spring Hill.
Grange pups have been on the Old Settlers’ menu since the late 1940s, when Mona Wood and her mother, Audria Bush, created the treat. At the time, the Bush family lived on a farm on Pflumm Road. They happened to try corn dogs on a day trip to Kansas City and decided to try to replicate the dogs at home. The result—which involved wrapping dough around an all-beef wiener and then frying the whole thing—actually contained no corn. It tasted pretty good anyway, and the Bush’s decided they might try selling them at Old Settlers’. They persuaded the reluctant organizers to add yet another food booth, this one operated in the name of the Morning Grange organization of Spring Hill. “We sold them for 15 cents each and charged another 10 cents for a bottle of soda. We raised about $167 for the Morning Grange, and that’s how they got the name Grange pups,” co-creator Audria Bush recalled. The Grange pups achieved instant popularity, and the booth sold about 500 that first year.
--ALBUM vol. 18, no. 3 (summer 2005)