Smith: A Burger Queen in South Dakota

This was Amy Meiers’ weekend:

A driver awaited the Santa Rosa escrow assistant and avid amateur cook at the airport in Rapid City, S.D., and swept Meiers and her family to a quite nice, complementary hotel room in Sturgis.

Motorcycles were everywhere. “The roar was incredible,” said Meiers, an Elsie Allen High grad, class of 2000.

She won’t forget the sight of throngs of riders huddling beneath highway overpasses to wait out thunderstorms.

This past weekend was the massive Harley-Davidson rally in Sturgis. Meiers was there for a side attraction, Weber’s Big Burger Battle.

One of the national competition’s three finalists, Meiers, 31, was there to grill her Nacho Average Burger, clock ticking, before a panel of judges.

Her hamburger was a masterpiece. But only one burger could win, and by a narrow margin the judges chose that of Culinary Institute of America graduate and restaurateur Dafna Mizrahi of New York City.

Despite the outcome, Meiers, who came home with a bounty of barbecue paraphernalia, says, “I feel like I won.” She reflects also that what she saw of South Dakota was far more scenic than she’d expected.

Though, she said,“I heard it’s not so great in the winter.”

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BILL ‘SPACEMAN’ LEE is a bona fide baseball character who’ll suit up in Santa Rosa on Sunday for the senior-league game that will serve also as the public celebration of the career of pitcher and family physician David Charp.

The bleachers at the Santa Rosa High ballfield may overflow with former patients grateful to Charp, who earlier this month retired and closed his practice on his 70th birthday.

Retirement leaves him more time for baseball. Charp’s a heck of good pitcher with the Jazz of the Redwood Empire Baseball League.

At Sunday’s 2 p.m. game, he will start out on the mound for the Jazz and his friend Lee, who’s visiting from the East Coast, will be on first.

Lee pitched for the Boston Red Sox through most of the ’70s, then a few years for the Montreal Expos. He earned the nickname with his counterculture proclivities and unedited remarks about league officials, umpires, Maoist China, population control, school busing, you name it.

Doc Charp said it will feel good to know that if his own pitching doesn’t work out so great on Sunday, he can pass the ball to his pal the Spaceman, a mere 35 years ago The Sporting News’ National League leftie of the year.

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BROWNIES FOR LUNCH: Berkeley Troop 42 of the Brownies met at Deborah Hahn’s house near Occidental on Saturday - for the first time in close to 60 years.

Present for the reunion, and wearing Girl Scouts-issued beanies, were four women who belonged to the troop and two women, 20-some years older, who’d served as troop mothers.

They reminisced and looked at photos and Brownies memorabilia they’d brought.

Hahn, 65, had forgotten they’d made yarn octopuses with braided legs, until one of the grayed Brownies pulled out hers.

They resolved to meet again, then they closed, as always, with song.

“Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.”

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@press democrat.com.