Bean Feed’s return will honor founder’s legacy
The 33rd annual Sonora Bean Feed returns at noon on Friday after a one-year hiatus due to the pandemic and without Galen “Mut” Mutzner, who founded the event in 1987 and hosted it until his retirement in 2017.
Mut, who died at his home in Sonora on July 22 after a brief illness, was born in Covington, Ohio, in 1926 and moved to Sonora in 1942. He was a veteran, a baseball umpire and will always be considered one of the community’s local treasures.
In 2017, at age 90, Mut turned over the gigantic iron vat that the beans are cooked in to the Tuolumne County Sportsmen, a local nonprofit fishing and hunting organization with approximately 150 members.
The organization, which has members in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties, began hosting the event in 2018.
”It’ll be a loss, naturally, not having Mut here to ring the bell,” Jim Phelan, president of the Tuolumne County Sportsmen, said. “He started the event and ran it for 30 years. It won’t be the same without him.”
The Tuolumne County Sportsmen organization was established in 1931, at first as the Tuolumne County Fish and Game, but found it necessary to change their name after the state adopted the moniker.
The organization, whose guiding principles are to promote public hunting and fishing grounds while safeguarding wildlife, sponsors four trap shooting teams every year and works with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife on projects that include deer counts.
Despite retiring from hosting the events, Mut and his wife, Sissy Mutzner, still attended the bean feeds in 2018 and 2019.
Mut, always clad in a cowboy hat, logging shirt, bandana and suspenders, along with his wife Sissy Mutzner, would still ring the bell in front of The Sportsman at 90 S. Washington St. in downtown Sonora to alert the attendees that it was now chow time.
”This year, we hope Mut’s wife, Sissy, can come out to the bean feed and ring the bell,” Phelan said, regarding the Mutzners who were married in 1950.
Mut’s presence won’t be the only thing missing Friday.
The annual community Pop Hudson Memorial Sing hosted by The Union Democrat, which is usually held at 12:45 p.m. in Courthouse Square on the same day as the bean feed, won’t be held again this year due to concerns over the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Founded in 1980 and named after a longtime downtown Sonora business owner, the Pop Hudson Memorial Christmas Sing typically gathers institutional organizations from the city and county, nonprofits, religious groups, clubs and businesses to sing holiday-themed carols with the community following the annual bean feed.
“I am sad that the sing along is not happening this year,” Phelan said. “COVID cancelled both events last year. I am glad we get to host the bean feed.”
A serving station will be set up on Linoberg Street, between The Sportsman and The Union Democrat, where volunteers will ladle out beans from the gargantuan vat that holds 100 pounds of beans, cooked with meat, vegetables and spices. Phelan said French bread and quesadillas will also be offered.
Phelan said the event costs approximately $1,000 to host and is supported through donations from the Sonora Area Foundation, which provides the food; Conifer Communications, which supplies the paper goods; and the Tuolumne County Sportsmen, which serves the beans, bread and quesadillas to the public.
When asked about the recipe for the bean feed Phelan replied that it’s “top secret.”
“If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,” he laughed. “Actually, I don’t know the recipe. It’s way, way, above my paygrade.”
Past bean feeds have served between 500-700 people, a far cry from Mut’s first year in 1987 when he decided to set up a small vat along a sidewalk on the Friday before Christmas and offered beans to anyone who stopped by.
Mut thought it would be fun, but had trouble getting anyone to partake of his beans, according to Sissy Mutzner, in a July interview with The Union Democrat following her husband’s passing.
Sissy Mutzner said her late husband took the beans he couldn’t give away, put them in clean paint cans and delivered them to people by Truckenmiller Road in Sonora.
Due to lingering COVID-19 concerns, Phelan said they expect a smaller crowd of roughly 450-500 people this year.
“I hope that I am wrong and a lot of people come out to celebrate this Tuolumne County tradition,” he said. “I hope the whole community comes together to honor Mut and to celebrate.”