STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
Keith and Paula Perry didn’t get the keys to the city…yet.
But Ketchum Mayor Neil Bradshaw did serve up a surprise announcement at Perry’s retirement party Saturday evening.
Bradshaw announced that the couple will be the Grand Marshals for Ketchum’s Wagon Days Parade over Labor Day weekend.
Perry’s had a run of 37 years in a four-story building on 4th Street that’s scheduled to be demolished and rebuilt by former NFL quarterback Carson Palmer.
By Saturday afternoon just a few plates and cookie cutters remained as Keith Perry passed around 500 of Perry’s famous cookies and realtor Mark Brown trotted out a couple kegs of beer and wine.
Dudley the dog, who has been greeting diners for years, basked in the glow of all the attention one last time.
And everywhere people were standing in small groups asking “What’s Plan B?” now that they no longer had their community hub for breakfast and lunch meetings.
Ed LaGrande, a writer who used Perry’s Restaurant as his office for the price of a muffin and coffee nearly every day for 33 years, noted that he has found his Plan B. You’ll find LaGrande working at Starbucks early in the morning, even though he laments it gets more tourists than locals hanging around.
Come mid-morning, he’ll pack up his laptop and head to The Community Library.