In 1953 Frank Stoeber, a true visionary, began making a ball of twine on his farm. In 1961, when the ball was 11 feet in diameter and used 1.6 million feet of string, Stoeber gave the ball to the town of Cawker City. To not fall behind the big ball of twine in Darwin, Minnesota, Cawker City holds an annual Twine-a-thon on the third weekend of August, where you can add to the ball. Twine was painted on the sidewalk and many windows in town had reproductions of famous paintings that incorporated the string. I'm not sure how wide the ball is now, but a sign said it now contains 7,801,766 feet of twine and weighs about 9 tons. It was a very impressive sight!
For souvenirs the gas station in town had little balls of twine. Too bad it was closed! So was an art gallery/gift shop. So was most of Cawker City on the Saturday afternoon I visited. No matter, I had barely enough time to get to my next encounter with visionary creation.
wow. that's large.
Posted by: tien | 17 May 2006 at 12:50 PM