World's largest . . . has home somewherePosted: Jan. 14, 2006
I was at the outskirts of Hurley last week when I was struck - not exactly like Paul when he was knocked from his mount on the road to Damascus, but along that line - by astonishing clarity. It happened as I drove by the World's Largest Corkscrew. Wait, I thought. Only moments earlier I had passed through Ironwood, home of the World's Largest Indian. And an hour before that in Woodruff I had taken passing notice of the sign pointing curious travelers to the World's Largest Penny. That was three World's Largest Things in an hour, and I wasn't even trying! Well, it hit me that with a little planning a determined driver could embark on a Wisconsin World's Largest Tour, and all that was lacking was a decent guide. No more. Here's that guide, prefaced only by a few rules.
One, my list is not exhaustive, so save your letters and phone calls if the World's Largest Thing near your hometown - the sunglass-wearing pink elephant north of Madison, the giant rat outside the cheese store in Fennimore, the cigar store Indian in the bait shop in Lynxville - isn't on it. Two, let's not look at these claims too closely. How should I know if there's actually a bigger corkscrew in Bulgaria's wine region? If a Wisconsin community claims a World's Largest Thing, that's good enough for me. Without further ado, then, Wisconsin's World Largest Tour: World's Largest Indian. It towers over the Upper Peninsula community of Ironwood, which will move nit-picking readers to e-mail machines to inform me Ironwood is not technically in Wisconsin. My column, my map. If Hiawatha, as the statue is called, merely turned his head he could see into Wisconsin, which ought to count for something. While some might have thought a large lumberjack or iron miner more appropriate, the 50-foot Hiawatha was chosen to stand as a symbol of the region, which has long used an Indianhead logo on signs and markers. World's Largest Corkscrew. Given Hurley's racy past, some - OK, I - might have thought a 50-foot Scarlet Woman would better serve as the city's symbol, and maybe someday that will happen. In the meantime, the tall corkscrew in front of a liquor store on Highway 2 on the city's western edge gets Hurley on the tour. World's Largest Penny. Woodruff was once home to Dr. Kate Newcomb, the famous "Angel on Snowshoes" who delivered medical care to then-remote residents of Vilas County, sometimes on foot in the snow. In the early 1950s Dr. Kate enlisted community children in a fund-raising effort for a new hospital, encouraging them to collect pennies for the effort. When word spread, pennies rolled into Woodruff from all over, 1.7 million or so in all. The oversized penny commemorating the event stands at 3rd Ave. and Hemlock, in front of housing units named for Dr. Kate. World's Largest Musky. Anyone who claims an actual fish as world record musky eventually gets called a liar and a cheat, so I'll stay out of that one. But no one disputes that the fiberglass musky that houses Hayward's National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame is the biggest of its kind anywhere. It stands 4.5 stories high, stretches 148 feet from teeth to tail, and visitors can go up and stand in its mouth. Trust me, the view through musky molars is amazing. World's Largest Six Pack. The six steel holding tanks that once bore the colors of Old Style beer in La Crosse now proclaim the products of City Brewery, which took over the longtime G. Heileman brewing facility a few years ago. The tanks are said to be large enough to hold 688,200 barrels of beer, enough to fill 7,340,796 cans which, placed end to end, would run 565 miles. Or maybe that's the resulting bathroom line, I'm not sure. World's Largest High-Wheeler Bicycle. Sparta, at one end of the Sparta-Elroy bicycle trail, proclaims itself the capital of bicycling and thus would be just where you would expect to find a very tall bicycle rider. World's Largest Round Barn. No roadside oddity, this one. The round barn in Marshfield that serves as host showplace of the Central Wisconsin State Fair is a must-see for any barn fan. Completed in 1916 by a band of barn-building brothers, it stands 70 feet high and measures 150 feet in diameter. It's on the national historic register, and it's a beaut. World's Largest Packers Receiver. I don't know if there is even a challenger, but the big receiver - No. 88 on his jersey, No. 1 in your heart - that once graced the entry to the Packer Hall of Fame in Green Bay has been repositioned outside a downtown brewpub. No instant replay is needed to declare the catch is good. World's Largest Grandfather Clock. As I said, if there's a larger one in Switzerland, I don't want to know. This one stands outside Gepetto's Top of the Hill Shop on Highway 42 in Kewaunee. World's Largest Talking Cow. Not the largest cow period (I think that one is in North Dakota, of all places) but largest cow capable of delivering recorded messages. At the push of a button, Chatty Belle, which you'll find on Highway 10 in Neillsville, offers dairy facts, gives nutrition information and endorses the merits of cheese. Even as kitsch goes, roadside cheese seems redundant, but we've got it. Sadly, the undisputed World's Largest Replica Cheese, re-creating the 17-ton hunk of cheddar displayed at the Wisconsin pavilion at the 1964-'65 World's Fair in New York, is no more. The original cheese was cut and eaten in 1965, but for years after this only-in-Wisconsin replica was displayed in a Cheesemobile parked adjacent to Chatty Belle and the original pavilion, which was brought to Neillsville to house a radio station. However, because of deterioration over the years, the Cheesemobile and replica cheddar were recently removed. Similarly sad, the jaw-dropping onetime World's Largest Badger that long stood atop a cheese store (if memory serves) near Birnamwood was dismantled a few years ago. The building now houses a strip club. And there's a lesson for us all. Enjoy the corkscrew and Chatty Belle while you can. Tomorrow doesn't come with guarantees.
|
World's
Largest Tour
