On this day in 2012, I visited…
the “Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota,” which is the World’s Largest rolled by a single person. The ball is within a locked pagoda and the museum was locked, but with some internet sleuthing and a public personal facebook account, I managed tracked down the phone number of someone who could help us. We managed to get an emergency personal tour of the museum, and even got to sneak inside the pagoda to check out the ball up close. I have now seen all three of the Worlds Largest Balls of Twine.
Of course I was going to visit this twine ball after hitting the other two (now three) competing ones. I mean, there was an entire Weird Al song devoted to it! And besides, one of my fav amateur videos on Youtube is:
As an official twine ball aficionado—yes, I’ve visited all four of them (each of which involves a fun story), and even owned BallsOfTwine.com for a while (a never-quite-launched project dedicated to fun Roadside Oddities)—I really loved that video.
It’s extremely amateurish, which is a critical component of its charm. The camera work is terrible, the “actors” aren’t exactly hitting their lines, and the husband clearly owes his wife immensely for putting up with the whole thing.
And of course, it’s an entire damn song, a seven-plus minute song, dedicated to a Twine Ball, so of course I’m in. Did I mention that it seemingly wasn’t even produced for distribution? Nope, this was a passion project, pure and simple. A “Great Family Adventure,” as they called it in the opening title. The only way we can watch it is because the sister of the protagonist uploaded it to her own Youtube account.