Al with "The Largest Ball of Twine" ~ Cawker City, Kansas.
The Twine Ball story began in 1953, when farmer Frank Stoeber, like thousands of his rural brethren, found it tidy and efficient to roll spare bits of sisal twine into a small ball in his barn. But over the years, instead of re-using or disposing of the twine, Frank kept rolling. By 1957, his twine ball weighed 2 1/2 tons and stood 8-ft tall. By 1961, when he turned it over to the town, Stoeber had over
1,600,000 feet of twine rolled into a sphere 11 feet in diameter.
After Stoeber's death in 1974, the town organized an annual Twine-A-Thon, where anyone can step up and wrap more scrap twine onto the ball. In 1988, it outgrew it's old gazebo and was moved to a more expansive roofed area.
After 2003's Twine-A-Thon, total twine length was recorded as 7,049,191 feet. A souvenir shop across the street sells memorabilia - hats, shirts, little twine ball models.
Al and I added a strand or two!!