No Strings Attached
My last semester in college, I got a second job delivering pizzas downtown. I knew the job would be short-lived because the goal was always to travel to Alaska after graduation. My wife and I found a family-owned reindeer farm in Fairbanks. They offered room and board if we worked on the farm over the summer, we just had to get there. Driving to Alaska, while stopping at National Parks and roadside attractions along the way, would only take a few weeks. We would devour packs of ramen over a camping stove and sleep in the car at truck stops when free camping wasn’t available. The gas alone for a road trip like this was enormous, so the second job would go directly to the 10,000-mile road trip.
I tried all kinds of tricks to get the biggest tip when delivering pizzas. For a brief time, I offered fortune cookies along with the pizzas, which seemed to confuse my customers more than delight them. I would always bring the pizza to the hotel room rather than make the customer meet me in the lobby. I even used a pizza shaped pen for signature. Using all my tricks, each pizza run would bring in about $3-$5 per delivery – one gallon of gas closer to Alaska. Each tip went into a zip lock bag in the middle console of my Camry. After a few months, I had completed the 400+ deliveries needed for my trip, and my zip lock bag was threatening to burst at the seams with thousands of dollars made up of ones and fives.
The morning of the trip was filled with anticipation. The first day’s route would be a 12-hour drive peppered with three stops along the way. The first stop would be St. Louis with a visit to their legendary City Museum. Katie and I had our first date here years before, and we still loved getting lost in the maze of slides, caves, and human skate parks. Next, we popped into some hidden tunnels near St. Louis I had stumbled across while exploring in college. And 7 hours west of there, in Cawker City Kansas, rested the quintessential American roadside attraction – the World’s Largest Ball of Twine.
Few would argue that the World’s Largest Ball of Twine belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Roadside Attractions. The quirky, fascinating, and uniquely American phenomena captures everything there is to love about roadside absurdities. Truth be told, the ball of twine could hold its own category on Mount Rushmore though - bearing four different, yet hotly contested twine balls, each claiming the title.
The World’s Largest Ball of Twine can be measured by circumference, weight, or amount of twine used, and their Midwestern origins trace their lineage to four different states: Minnesota, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Texas. And while each claim a piece of the title, they each come with some fine print.
The Wisconsin ball claims to be the heaviest, but doesn’t use traditional sisal twine. Some even refer to their art medium as string- which is serious trash-talk for twine enthusiasts.
The most controversial ball, created in just four years in Texas, used machines and farm equipment for assistance. When it was finished in 1993 it was the largest by circumference, but its use of nylon twine also made it the lightest. The creator used twine from a variety of sources leading to an array of colors resembling a ball of chewed gum. Opposing factions often refer to it as a cash grab because it was sold to Ripley’s shortly after its creation where its currently on display in Branson, Missouri.
The Darwin Minnesota ball, the largest made by one person, is the most symmetrical. It is often upheld as the standard of twine balls and even archived in Weird Al’s Yankovic’s song, “The Largest Ball of Twine in Minnesota”. It also holds the distinction of being the oldest ball of twine, with its core dating back to 1950, and its use of traditional sisal twine is considered a recipe for roadside perfection. But unlike Weird Al’s road trip, you can’t walk right up to the ball. It can be publicly viewed, but not touched, in a gazebo lined with Plexiglas. And while the community of Darwin proudly refused an offer from Ripley’s, their ball remains trapped in a museum of its own where it hasn’t grown or moved since 1991.
I believe twine is for touchin’, and that’s why I’ve always favored the current Guinness World Record holder in Kansas, whose weight and size surpass all three other balls of twine. It lives under an ever-shrinking gazebo as it continues to grow in the town square of Cawker City.
Making it all the way to Cawker City on day one of our road trip was setting the bar pretty high for the rest of the summer, and we were just 5 miles away when I saw blue lights behind me. 63mph in a 55 hardly felt like speeding through flat Kansas, but I pulled over and waited for the officer to approach the car. We explained we were on our way to Alaska, but we were taking a short detour to see the world’s largest ball of twine with our own eyes, which seemed more difficult for him to understand than we anticipated.
He asked why we were going to Alaska, and we kindly explained we would be working and living on a Reindeer Farm. “Wouldn’t it be called a reindeer ranch?” he replied.
They don’t eat the Reindeer, they’re vegans. They grow other things on the farm, and the reindeer prance around to help the vegetables grow.
He gave me his best “We’re not in Kansas anymore” expression and asked for my registration. Not a problem, officer. I popped open the middle console in my Camry where I always stored it and stopped in my tracks.
Taking up almost the entire space in the console was a one-gallon zip-lock bag containing thousands of dollars in cash. I swallowed reluctantly, removed the bag, and plopped it on my lap while I kept digging for my registration. After what felt like eternity, I showed the officer my registration. “Not a problem, sir.”
“Oh, I think we do have a problem,” he responded.
The officer called for backup and the next hour involved us explaining to even more officers our plan, which everyone seemed to have a hard time understanding. Yes, we are planning on driving across the border in a vehicle full of cash, luggage, and a shameful amount of ramen. We fully anticipate that a Camry will get us through the Canadian Rockies and as a matter of fact we had not even second-guessed that belief until this moment. Yes, we are going to work on a reindeer farm and no they don’t eat the reindeer. The reindeer help the plants grow and we aren’t sure exactly how that works but it’s a beautiful symbiotic mystery.
I watched the sun set as two officers meticulously searched our car. It wasn’t the Kansas sunset I had imagined, but after carefully examining the car bumper to bumper, we were free to go.
Before driving off, the officer poked his head through my window one last time. “Just so you know, I’ve responded to more than one public urination call at the ball of twine. Some people like to pee on it - enjoy”.
I briefly wondered if this is why the Darwin, Minnesota ball could only be viewed behind glass. I smiled as he handed me my bag of cash through the window and drove away in the dark.
We decided to view the ball the next morning at sunrise. Watching the sun peek out from behind the behemoth was reminiscent of a solar eclipse. The creation measured nearly 12ft tall and 9 feet in diameter. Its circumference was 42 feet and weighed over 20,000 lbs. That’s an estimate of course as it is well beyond the size of being picked up and weighed. When it reached its final resting place, the gazebo had to be built around it, and then rebuilt, and then rebuilt. As one of only two actively growing twine balls in the country, its width is still inching closer to the edges.
I suppose this is one of the most endearing elements of the ball. Besides the occasional urinist, the community of Cawker City continues to embrace the ball with annual twine-a-thons. The summer event brings out dozens of volunteers dawning shirts like “I’ve got twine on my mind”. The ball has a caretaker, a sweet old woman named Lottie Herod, who stores spools of twine in her business across the street to ensure others can contribute. The communal effort is a point of contention amongst the other balls, but each of them have their own asterisk, - and only one other ball is currently growing.
While the Wisconsin ball is growing daily, it’s rarely seen. It rests on cinder blocks on private property where nobody ever gets to watch a sunrise peek over its lopsided edges. It’s eccentric owner, who goes by JFK, claims to have received a message from God himself to stop drinking and start rolling twine. While not the largest, his “ball” is supposedly the heaviest since it also neglects to use traditional sisal twine and incorporates a strange knitting aspect where the twine is tucked and tied.
And while the Cawker City ball may not be an independent feat, that wasn’t always the plan. The original roller, Frank Stoeber, surpassed the Darwin ball early on. It was only after he died that the he left it to the city to continue his work, and they haven’t disappointed.
In a city too small to have its own court house, the ball of twine lies at the center of the town square. It is the only ball that you can walk right up to - no admission and no private property. You can knock on Lottie’s door and join thousands of others who have made the record possible. You can hug the scratchy beast and smell the urine. No strings attached.
