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DAY 7 – Saturday, March 20
START: Manhattan, KS
END: Garden City, KS
MILEAGE: 415 miles

HIGHLIGHTS: Kansas, World’s Largest Ball of Twine, Monument Rocks

We hit the Manhattan Wal-Mart around 9:30 to buy more film and restock our oatmeal supply and were on the road by ten.  We had two destinations today and they would take us clear across to the other side of Kansas.  Somehow we got immediately off course and wound up drifting almost thirty miles north.  That’s the problem with a lot of the roads in these rural areas.  You can sometimes drive for over a half hour without ever seeing a sign indicating the road you’re on or the direction you’re heading.  Even the signs at intersections often don’t tell you more than the local street name in town.  Fortunately Lauren is one of the few women I know who is actually competent with a map.  Based on the names of the towns we were passing through, she figured out that we had somehow left Route 24 West and gotten onto 77 North.  She redirected me and an hour later we were back on 24.

Every time Lauren and I told somebody that we were going to drive through Kansas, their response was always the same.  They’d cock their eyebrow and scrunch up their face, confused saying, “Kansas?  Why Kansas?” 

It’s the same look I used to get when I told people I drove across Texas on another road trip.  “Oh god, I hate Texas.  It’s just so big and full of nothing.”

Gee, that’s exactly what I loved about Texas.  And that’s what I loved about Kansas. 

“There’s nothing to look at but farmland.”

Exactly.  You can go anywhere in this country to look at buildings, mountains and lakes, but you can only get “nothing” here.  Don’t get me wrong, I love buildings, mountains and lakes as much as the next guy, but there was just something about the wide open nothing in Kansas that was a thousand times more stirring and serene.  Lauren and I both agreed that we’d probably go crazy after awhile if we actually lived here and had no visual stimulation, no undulations in the landscape to attract our eyes.  But we just couldn’t understand how somebody could drive through this state and not fall in love with it – if only temporarily.  Even flying past it all at 70m.p.h., we could feel ourselves slowing down, our bodies, our minds and our schedules easing back to the pace of Kansas. 

We drove for miles at a time not saying a word, just looking out at the perfectly flat, pristine landscape that surrounded us.  For long stretches at a time the horizon was broken by only telephone poles, windmills and crop dusters.  The tallest structures you see in Kansas are grain silos and wheat conveyors.  Even the few trees you come across stand no taller than twenty feet or so.  It was inconceivable to me before this trip that there still existed places, much less entire states in this country that still remained this undeveloped.  But I suppose farmland can only spread in one direction – out.  Never up. 

I’d always heard that Montana held the title for biggest sky.  Looking around in Kansas, I couldn't imagine a sky bigger than this.  With the land almost completely flat and nothing to block the horizon on any side of you, the sky seemed to spread infinitely out all around you and rise up higher than you could imagine in a never-ending dome.  We found a Kansas shotglass, depicting wheat fields, hay bales and windmills to add to the collection

In my journeys across this great country, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are five landmarks every good American traveler must visit.  Failure to visit any one of these places, I think negates a person from true road tripper status.  The key stops are: Mount Rushmore, the Saint Louis Arch, Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon and the World’s Largest Ball of Twine.  Nothing captures the essence of “America” in one spot more succinctly than these locations. 

Yes, I know what you’re thinking.  One of these things is not like the other.  But the one common thread each of these places has is that when their names are mentioned, you recognize them instantly as American icons.  The Worlds Largest Ball of Twine might not be as forthright in every American’s mind as the others, but each and every one of us has heard of it.  It’s usually mentioned at the butt end of a joke on TV to accentuate how boring life in the Midwest must be if they get off on giant collections of string.  But for serious road trippers, this is the granddaddy of all roadside attractions – the one that spawned several dozen “world’s-largest-ball-of” knockoffs.  And if nothing else, it begs the question: “Why would anybody make a ball of twine to begin with?” 

Ask that question to a Midwest farmer and you’ll likely get a bemused smile in return, “You’re a city slicker ain’t ya?”

Before the advent of baling wire, hay bales were bound with twine.  Farmers couldn’t just leave the scrap pieces lying on the ground or it would get caught in their machinery.  Most farmers simply burned or reused their extra twine, but Frank Stoeber of Cawker City, Kansas started saving his back in 1953.  By 1961 the twine ball he’d created could no longer fit inside his barn so he rolled it out and donated it to the town.  Pulling a stunt like that in New York City would likely have gotten Stoeber arrested and the twine hawked on the street.  In Kansas, it turned him into a local legend and made the ball a staple of guidebooks everywhere. 

There are actually three cities in the country that claim to be in possession of the world’s largest ball of twine.  The other two balls are in Darwin, Minnesota and Branson, Missouri.  The Branson ball is the one that’s actually in Mr. Guinness’s book, but from everything I’ve read about it, it’s a total cop out.  Some guy – his name doesn’t even bear mentioning – heard about the two other balls and decided to attract some attention of his own.  So he hired somebody to help him spend four years winding a ball from donated pieces of nylon twine, using a system of pulleys to wrap it.  After the record books gave him credit, he sold it to Ripley’s Believe it or Not, which now houses it in its Branson museum.  Which of course means you have to pay to see it.  To me, that just doesn’t count.  The Cawker City and Darwin balls each originated out of the grass roots of America.  They began simply as means of efficiency and only became famous years later.  That is the American way.  The ball in Branson is nothing more than the American money machine in twine form.

We took our cue from the book ECCENTRIC AMERICA by Jan Friedman.  They only mention the ball from Kansas.  We approached Cawker City in the early afternoon, not knowing quite what to expect.  Would it be touristy?  That was hard to imagine by the middle-of-nowhere look to the surrounding area.  Would there be crowds of people swarming around for pictures?  Did the locals get a kick out of the city folk coming in to gawk at their claim to fame?  Or did they just shake their heads in disbelief?  The sign at the edge of town told us all we needed to know.  The D and apostrophe had fallen off the declaration: “Home of the World’s Largest Ball of Twine.”

After almost an hour since our last pit stop, seeing the twine became secondary to finding Lauren a bathroom.  With no trees to squat behind, Kansas, unlike Virginia, really doesn’t make it easy for a pregnant woman to pee on the side of the road.  We drove down Main Street looking for an open gas station or general store.  There was one gas station in town, but it was obviously closed.  We drove farther down the street.  Most of the buildings were the non-descript kinds favored by small insurance companies, travel agencies and realtors – all places that aren’t open on Saturdays.  Before we knew it, we were already on our way out of town.  Not only hadn’t we seen any open stores, we hadn’t seen the ball of twine or any people for that matter.  We turned around and drove slower this time.  The town was absolutely deserted.  No signs of life anywhere.  And still no twine.  I recalled seeing a restaurant before the town line on the way in.  We drove back there and it too was closed.

Lauren was near tears.  We drove farther out of town and headed up a side dirt road that led to some low-growing shrubs.  Lauren got out and tried to do her business while I stood lookout.  I kept imagining some farmer spotting us and hauling out a shotgun for urinating on his property.  The wind was whipping up something fierce and with nothing substantial to block it, Lauren… ahem, soiled her shoes and pant leg.  There was a tense moment where she got frustrated and then I got frustrated at her for being frustrated.  There were some quick hormonal tears then we hugged, kissed, wiped up and headed back into town.

I drove even slower this time looking for the ball of twine.  From what I’ve read, we’re not the first people to have missed it on the first couple passes.  Suddenly, with no fanfare, there it was.  All 17,000 pounds and 7 million feet of it.  Unlike its counterparts in Minnesota, which rests behind a barrier of glass, and in Missouri, which is just too despicable to even mention again, Cawker City’s famous ball sits in an open-air pavilion on the side of Main Street, Route 24.  We were able to walk right up and touch it.  I guess there are pros and cons to that kind of openness.  While it makes the roadside attraction much more inviting and hospitable to travelers, there are people in this world who simply have no respect for anything.  Years of parents letting their kids climb on top of the ball for pictures have caused the it to dimple and fray.  A few years back somebody even tried to set the twine on fire, forcing the town to periodically spray it with fire retardant. 

Still the famous ball continues to grow.  It currently measures eleven feet in diameter with a forty-foot circumference.  Travelers are encouraged to add to their own bits of scrap twine to the ball, though the rules are strict.  It must be bona fide sisal hay bale twine.  String and yarn are prohibited.  Every August, the town hosts its annual Twine-a-Thon where revelers are invited to come up and take their turn winding more scrap twine onto the ball.

This was definitely a spot that required both Lauren and I to be in the picture, but looking around again, I saw no people.  So I placed the camera on top of the car and tried to squint through the eyepiece and line it up for a timer shot.  The whipping wind wasn’t making it easy.  I must have spent ten minutes fiddling with the camera, repositioning the car and giving myself a crick in the neck before another car pulled up and a smiling lady got out. 

She introduced herself as Linda and said, “I saw you struggling and thought I’d come over and give you a hand.”

She took our picture and invited us to sign the guest register.  Linda Clover and her husband Jack, we found out, were known in Cawker City as “the twine’s caretakers.”  All day long Linda, who also works as the town’s school librarian, drives over to take pictures for tourists and talk about the town and the twine with all who are interested. 

Lauren made the comment, “We weren’t sure if this was normal, visiting the ball of twine, or if everybody just laughs at us.”

Linda admitted, “Oh we all laugh, but we still do it.” 

That’s great I thought.  They, like everybody else, can’t believe people would drive this far out of their way to look at a ball of twine.  But the town knows it has something special here and they take it to heart.  Painted yellow on the sidewalk is a “twine line” that runs along both sides of Main Street.  Linda pointed out the artwork displayed in the storefront windows in town.  In an attempt to brighten up the otherwise drab-looking business district, local artist Cher Olson had recreated over forty famous paintings including the Mona Lisa, American Gothic and Van Gogh’s Starry Night.  Each rendition had one notable change, a ball of twine inserted somewhere into the artwork.

The odd thing was that in spite of its status as a bastion of tourist trap attractions, the World’s Largest Ball of Twine didn’t actually seem to be trapping any tourists in Cawker City.  None of the local businesses seemed to be profiting off of the twine’s popularity.  We commented to Linda how there wasn’t even anything open today, a Saturday.  She took it a step farther and confided to us that most of the buildings along Main Street didn’t even have any tenants.  They were just vacant facades.  It was so unlike the America I knew, where everybody is just trying to make a buck any way they can.  In the reality I’m used to, there would have been shops lining the street selling Ball of Twine key chains, Ball of Twine t-shirts and Ball of Twine cup-holders.  But in Cawker City, on the busiest tourist day of the week, there wasn’t even a store selling gas or a bottle of Coke. 

I had to remind myself that this is still the heart of farm country.  That’s how people make their living out here.  That’s how the ball of twine originated in first place after all.  Not for tourism, but for farming.  In spite of their somewhat dubious claim to fame, the people of Cawker City hadn’t forgotten who they are or where they came from.  I respected that immensely.

There is apparently only one place in Cawker City to buy Ball of Twine paraphernalia, and according to Linda, it too was closed today.  “But,” she said, “I can see Lottie outside working in her garden.  She’ll open it up for you.”  She pointed to a building across the street, “Just tell her Linda sent you over.”

We thanked Linda and drove across the street where we met Lottie Herod.  She was maybe in her seventies, though none too frail.  Dressed in jeans and an Irish-green sweatshirt and bandana, she had been wielding a hoe with ease and aggression when we pulled up.  “Linda sent us to you,” I said, and right away Lottie was all smiles.

“Oh she did, did she?”  She fumbled with her keys and opened the old-style door to her shop, a building that had to be at least a hundred years old.  First thing, Lottie had us put a pin in her map to show where we were from.  There was already a pin in Philadelphia, so Lauren put one in Sayreville and I put one in my hometown of Troy, Maine.  I noted with pride that I was apparently the first person from north of Portland to set foot in Lottie’s shop. 

Lauren of course made quick use of Lottie’s bathroom, which she had wallpapered herself with the covers from old issues of The Ladies Home Journal. 

Lottie’s shop actually functioned more as an antique shop, with Ball of Twine souvenirs stuck in almost as an afterthought.  She sold lots of old lamps, sheet music, vintage radios, postcards from pre-war days and much more.  The shop had a grandma’s attic feel to it with lots of miscellaneous old stuff sitting around collecting dust.  Looking up the old dusty stairs into the darkened second floor, I could see even more junk that wasn’t being sold in the shop.  I don’t know how much business Lottie does in Cawker City, but I can’t imagine her selling all this stuff in her lifetime – or anyone else’s lifetime for that matter. 

The shop’s collection of Ball of Twine souvenirs was modest but endearing because Lottie made everything herself.  In addition to several other skills, she was also a potter and had crafted teakettles, coffee mugs, salt-n-pepper shakers and utensil holders all bearing the Ball of Twine’s likeness.  Lauren and I bought a few postcards as well as a ball of twine Christmas ornament and mug, which Lottie signed with a marker.  There were no shotglasses, so I bought a Ball of Twine toothpick holder, which was close enough in size and function for me.  Lottie wrote down our purchase on a piece of carbon paper and added up the price on a calculator, making change in a sliding wooden drawer in the counter that functioned as her cash register.

After that, we all stood around talking for a good half hour.  Lottie showed us around her shop, pointing out her old hand-cranked elevator.  She showed us how the brake worked and informed us that it had to be set properly or else the elevator would fly all the way to the top.  Apparently that had happened to her once.  Her granddaughter had been playing around the elevator and must have touched the brake, because when Lottie went in to bring things upstairs, the elevator took off.  The impact at the top apparently shook the entire building.

Lottie showed us her paintings, another of her many skills.  She is very talented and has an acute attention to detail.  In one painting depicting a wheat field, we looked closely and it was apparent that she hadn’t merely slapped a layer of brown and tan on the easel.  Each individual stalk of wheat had been lovingly and painstakingly painted on.  Lottie had even made her own contribution to the Ball of Twine art campaign on Main Street.  In her window was her own rendition of one of my favorite paintings, Marc Chagall’s “I and the Village.”  In place of the bright purple circle normally in the middle of the painting, Lottie had of course substituted a ball of twine. 

We were amazed how easy it was to talk to Lottie.  Every time we were about to leave, she asked us if we wanted to see something else.  We felt the New Jersey wash right out of us in this place.  Normally we would have been looking at our watches and rolling our eyes, saying, “No we really have to go.”  But we found ourselves fascinated with everything she was saying and showing us.  Finally our schedule did get the better of us.  We thanked Lottie and she thanked us, waving goodbye as we pulled out of her driveway.  On our way out of town, we spotted Linda talking to another family over at the World’s Largest Ball of Twine. 

Lauren and I smiled at each other and reluctantly drove on, leaving Cawker City behind us.

THERE'S MORE
DAY 7 - PAGE 2