For the first time since we left home two days earlier, I couldn’t wait for my morning to get started. Tom’s alarm went off at 6:00am and he had no trouble whatsoever completing his routine preparations before departure. But his wife, on the other hand, seemed to be doing her best to stamp a capital ‘L’ on lollygag. As the clock slowly ticked away, my photographer reminded Vicki numerous times about the importance of leaving the hotel by 8:15. Each time his “friendly” reminder was met with sarcasm, which started to get under my painted resin skin after a while. I giggled to myself when Tom said at one point: “Look, if you don’t want to go down in that mine, just say so. The bobble head and I will go on the tour, then we’ll pick you up here when we’re finished.” That went over as well as someone saying “hi” to a fellow passenger named Jack on an airplane.
When the three of us were finally comfortable in the Jeep and were headed south on U.S. 41, it was 8:28am – which was 13 minutes later than my patient camera guy had suggested. I heard Vicki say: “Relax, we have plenty of time to get there and buy the tour tickets.” Tom sarcastically fired back: “If you’re wrong, we’ll be heading to the largest ball of twine on the face of the earth, which is just four-short hours away.” Even though I laughed when my photographer/Clark W. Griswold made that comment, I knew he wasn’t kidding. The largest ball of twine was one of our scheduled stops on the day’s agenda; however, it was only three hours and forty-five minutes away in Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin.
Vicki pulled into the parking lot of the Quincy Mine at precisely 8:42am. Three minutes later, a woman arrived and opened the gift shop. Tom quickly followed her inside the building, which in 1893 was the Supply Office for the Quincy Mine. When my photographer emerged with a couple of wristbands in his hand, I saw a wry smile appear on his wife’s face. “See, you had nothing to worry about. I told you we had plenty of time.” My only thought was: “Why can’t you be more like Mongo?”
Our tour started at 9am in the old 1918 Hoist House, which was where everyone picked out a yellow hard hat to wear during our two-hour adventure. Everyone except for me, that is. I didn’t see a hard hat small enough to fit my head. I wondered what would happen if a rock or a chunk of copper smacked me in the noggin. Would Sunday July 31, 2022 be my last day on this earth. Or under it, as the case may be!
When our group of 13 had finished watching a short video about the mine, we were led by Clayton Gomez into the main room of the 1918 Hoist House where we got our first look at a “sleeping giant”. That giant was an engineering marvel known as the Nordberg Hoist, which was purchased by Quincy Mining Company for $180,000 in 1918. After Gomez explained the intricacies of the enormous steam-powered hoist, our group was taken outside where we boarded the Cog Rail Tram for our “Journey to the Center of the Earth”!
Okay, we didn’t quite make it to the Earth’s center, but we did walk into the incline mine shaft for about a half-mile and were roughly 365 feet below the surface. Clayton explained what it was like for the miners to work there; we saw discarded equipment that’s been left underground since the 1970s; and when Gomez shut off the lighting system, our group experienced absolute blackness. It’s hard for me to explain what it was truly like inside the Quincy Mine, so I hope my photographer’s images will help bring our journey to life.
When the three of us returned to the surface with the rest of our tour group, I had a greater appreciation for copper and for the miners who worked hard to get it out of the ground. For nearly a century, a countless number of men traveled thousands of feet into the ground with nothing more than a candle to light their way. The manual labor was intense; it was so dangerous that one-third of every miner who worked in the Quincy Mine suffered debilitating, life-alerting injuries or were killed on the job. While those soles never got rich from their labor, they did help our nation as it entered the Industrial Revolution. The copper removed from the Quincy Mine was used in a lot of things from the 1850s and beyond, but none more important than the wiring that brought electricity to homes all across America.
Today, the Quincy Mine is virtually abandoned; most of its skeletal remains were left as silent memorials to those who dedicated their lives working there. Thankfully, those ruins haven’t been bulldozed; visitors can still walk in the footsteps of those brave miners. After all, a mine is a terrible thing to waste.
When Vicki drove the Jeep south over the Houghton-Hancock Bridge as we headed for the Michigan – Wisconsin border, I couldn’t help but think about our time inside that mine. While our visit to the Keweenaw Peninsula didn’t blow me away at first, the Quincy Mine was the “grand finale showstopper”, at least for me.
It took roughly two hours for us to reach the Wisconsin border, but we gained an hour of that time back before we reached Ironwood, Michigan, which was located in the Central Time Zone. As we finally left our own state, my photographer grew increasingly excited; he had planned for the three of us to visit over a half-dozen sites in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa that were associated with the 1959 Winter Dance Party tour. And although Tom’s primary interest is with the Presidents of the United States, he also possesses a huge passion for Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper and their ill-fated tour in ’59.
When we arrived at our first site in Wisconsin, which was in the small town of Hurley and a stone’s throw from the Michigan border, I second-guessed my photographer’s decision. Vicki had the Jeep parked in a lot adjacent to a place called ‘Club Carnival’; their attached shingle stated the business was a “Gentleman’s Club”. I also noticed one of the buildings across Silver Street appeared to be a strip club. I couldn’t believe my painted eyes and I wondered how Tom would explain this stop to his wife.
Late in the night of January 31, 1959, a couple of hours or so after Buddy Holly and his friends had finished their gig at the Duluth Armory (located roughly one hundred miles to the northwest), the Winter Dance Party tour bus (which was an old, reconditioned school bus) broke down on a rural highway about ten miles south of Hurley. It was 35-degrees-below-zero and nearly became the Night the Music Died; until a sheriff’s officer arrived on the scene and saved the musicians from certain catastrophe. Several locals were called to help bring the performers back to civilization, if that’s what you call Hurley, Wisconsin. While drummer Carl Bunch was transported to a hospital in nearby Ironwood with frostbitten feet, the rest of the performers ended up at Club Carnival in Hurley for some late-night food before they were taken to a nearby hotel for some rest.
While I stood in front of Club Carnival and posed for a handful of photos, I thought about Buddy and Ritchie and the rest of the gang as they walked through the front door of that establishment. I shook my head in disbelief as I wondered what those performers had to eat there, especially when I saw an exterior sign that advertised “Adult Party Supplies”. I’m sure things were different in 1959 – but what happened in Hurley, stayed in Hurley; tales that were forever silenced in a frozen cornfield two nights later.
It was a relief when we turned south onto Highway 51 where Hurley became a distant memory in Vicki’s rearview mirror. I’m sure there were very nice areas in that small Wisconsin town, but unfortunately, we didn’t experience any of them.
For nearly ten miles, the three of us headed south on Highway 51; which was a two-lane paved road that travelled parallel with the Wisconsin – Michigan border a mile to the east. When we arrived at a fairly steep incline in the road, which was roughly a mile north of Pine Lake, I heard Tom say to his wife: “Pull over – this could be the spot. This looks like the section of highway that Tommy Allsup had described in an interview 50 years after that fateful night.”
There was no historic marker. No plaque along the roadside that described the early morning hours of February 1, 1959. But it was on that lonely patch of asphalt, surrounded on both sides by thousands of pine trees, where the early chapters of Rock and Roll history were written. Had the Winter Dance Party tour bus not broken down in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, Buddy Holly might not have chartered a flight two nights later. No one will ever know what type of Rock and Roll songs and innovative techniques were lost to the world when those three young stars met their untimely demise in Iowa.
It was a solemn moment when Tom set me down along the edge of Highway 51. There was no way to know for sure if we were in the exact spot where the Winter Dance Party bus froze-up and died, but we knew we were close. As a dozen or so cars whizzed past us, it was likely those drivers had no idea what a bobble head and a fat photographer were doing standing along the side of the road. A good percentage of those same folks likely couldn’t name a song recorded by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, or The Big Bopper either. But as I stood on the pavement in the early afternoon heat on the final day of July, I envisioned those young performers as they stepped off their ramshackle bus in the middle of nowhere with no help in sight. All were cold; some were scared; a few were sick; and the entire group of entertainers were stranded on what they described as “The Tour from Hell”.
Tom and I returned to the Jeep where Vicki had patiently waited for us to “do our thing”. Seconds after my photographer placed me on the back seat, I nearly laughed out loud when I heard the words: “Okay kids, let’s get going. Unless you don’t want to see JFK’s largest ball of twine on the face of the earth, which is only two short hours away.”
A John F. Kennedy site in Wisconsin? A ball of twine owned by our 35th President? I was ‘all in’ and couldn’t wait to get there. However, in order for us to see the ball of twine, the 90-mile route forced us to drive directly past Club Carnival and through the center of Hurley before we began the lengthy and uneventful journey westward.
As we pulled into the driveway of a small country home just south of Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin, I heard my photographer’s wife as she second-guessed Tom’s reasoning for the visit. “Did we go out of our way to get here? I don’t see any ball of twine; I don’t have a good feeling about this.” Tom assured her the twine ball would be fun to see and the guy who owned it would be cool as well. Less than a minute after Vicki turned the Jeep’s engine off, an elderly man appeared out of nowhere – he was wearing a plaid shirt, gray work pants held up by suspenders, and a ball cap embroidered with a ‘Link Ford & RV’ logo. Tom broke the ice right away: “You must be the famous JFK. We’ve come a long way to see the world’s largest ball of twine.” The man smiled and asked us to follow him to an area in his backyard where his egg-shaped ball of twine was kept under an open-air enclosure to help protect it from the elements.
I was stunned – I thought this was supposed to be a John F. Kennedy site. But it turned out JFK was the initials of James Frank Kotera who was born on February 2, 1947. During our 15-minute visit, Kotera mentioned he was once an alcoholic until he had a talk with God in 1979. During that conversation, according to JFK, God encouraged the Highland dump employee to stop drinking and start collecting twine. I chuckled to myself when I thought: “When God ordered JFK to turn wine into twine, all James needed to do was add a little tea. But instead, this guy’s got a 12-ton monstrosity sitting in his backyard.”
I was thrilled when Tom hung me by my ponytail on the world’s heaviest ball of twine; it was a stress test for my surgically implanted spring. As I clung to the twine while my photographer snapped a few photos, I became fonder of the large oval ball that weighed-in at an amazing 24,150 pounds. The highlight for me wasn’t seeing the record-setting sphere; it was the man who has spent the last 43 years collecting the twine and creating the ball. Near the end of our visit, the 75-year-old slowly made his way to a nearby mailbox and he pulled out a three-foot long piece of lined paper filled with some hand-written notes. While most of the notes helped explain who he was and how he got started, I laughed when I saw the passage that read: “The World’s only talking Ground Hog – JFK Twine Man, born Feb. 2nd, 1947, Ground Hog’s Day.”
For a split second, I thought I was Rusty Griswold on ‘Vacation’ with his parents Clark and Ellen. We had just visited the heaviest ball of twine on the face of the earth; and it was owned by JFK; who was born on Groundhog Day. Does it get any better than that? It better, or I’m in trouble on this trip!
It was 2:50pm when we left James Frank Kotera and his big ball behind. I heard Vicki say she was hungry, and luckily my photographer had that covered with our next stop. My companions are always on the lookout for places to eat that were featured on the Food Network’s ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives’, and there was one that Tom found on-line located in Superior, Wisconsin that was only 30 miles down the road.
During our drive into Superior, I happened to look out of the passenger side window of the Jeep and I caught a glimpse of the lake freighter Arthur M. Anderson as it was being loaded. The irony of that was the Anderson was the ship closest to the Edmund Fitzgerald when it sank. The captains of the two ships were in direct communication with each other throughout the storm. But unfortunately, as we passed the Anderson, my photographer was busy trying to find the song ‘Dominique’ on Sirius XM Radio, and he missed the ship.
Vicki parked the Jeep directly in front of the Anchor Bar & Grill, which was located in the North End section of Superior, Wisconsin. I posed for a few photos near the exterior, which appeared as though it was a ‘Dive’ rather than a ‘Diner’. When the three of us walked through the front door of the place, it looked like a ‘Dive’ there as well; albeit a cool dive. The motif throughout the place was nautical and it was cluttered from floor to ceiling. I loved it! During my companion’s meal, I stood on the table and watched my photographer devour the Anchor Bar’s signature burger called a T.W.A. Whaleback. Vicki went less glamorous; she ordered a traditional Swiss burger. When Tom asked our server what Guy Fieri ate when he was there, we were told the host of Triple D never set foot in the place. A Food Network camera crew was there on July 1, 2010 and filmed the interior, while Guy narrated the episode called “A Little Twisted”.
It was disappointing to my photographer and me when we learned Guy Fieri had never eaten in the Anchor Bar & Grill. We had been to seven other places in the past few years that were featured on Fieri’s hit show ‘Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives’, and it’s always fun for me to pose near areas where Guy stood on camera. Even though that Superior, Wisconsin bar was shown on the Season 11 episode titled ‘A Little Twisted’, it wasn’t quite the same when we discovered Guy hadn’t graced the establishment with his presence.
It was nearly 4:30pm when we left the Anchor Bar & Grill and I was thrilled to leave. Not that I didn’t enjoy the ambiance of that ‘Dive’, it was because there were four Presidential sites in Duluth, Minnesota that Tom wanted to see before sunset. But first, we needed to find a place to spend the night. While seated in the Jeep parked in front of the Anchor Bar, Vicki found a good deal on a hotel that was within a mile of us. Minutes after we had registered, and my companions had their stuff lugged to our Boarders Inn & Suites room, I heard Tom tell his wife it was time to hit the road again. However, it was immediately obvious Vicki wasn’t as anxious to leave the hotel as I was. If I was a betting bobble head, I’d bet she’d lay rubber on the road if Tom said we were headed to Chip and Joanna Gaine’s Magnolia Silos. But since it was a few Presidential sites we were on the way to see, Vicki moved as though she had polio.
Within minutes of leaving the hotel, we crossed over the St. Louis River and arrived in the city some call “The San Francisco of the Midwest” – Duluth, Minnesota. From an opening in the camera case, I had a good view of downtown Duluth as we rolled into town; and I was very underwhelmed. Perhaps it was due to the dark storm clouds that appeared over the horizon, but Duluth looked old and tired; worn out from years of being the main port on the Iron Range due to its proximity at the most western point of Lake Superior.
Our first of four stops was at the Greysolon Plaza, which was located along East Superior Street in the heart of Duluth. Built in 1924, Greysolon Plaza has evolved from an elegant historic hotel into a senior living apartment complex that features 150 rooms for its patrons. However, the 14-story tall building hasn’t lost any of its glorious Renaissance style from yesteryear, including the lobby’s original gold leaf ceiling, crystal chandeliers, carved rosettes and Corinthian columns. But my photographer and I weren’t there to see old people hanging out at their apartment; not at all. For 55 years, from when the building opened in 1925 until it became the current “Old Folks Home”, that building was known as Hotel Duluth.
At 5:00pm on September 24, 1963, President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade traveled from Duluth International Airport to the Hotel Duluth where our 35th President planned to spend the night. An estimated 50,000 people lined the streets of Duluth to see the popular young President. No, JFK wasn’t at Hotel Duluth to tie twine into knots, he was in town to deliver a speech at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. That evening, after speaking in front of a packed crowd at the university, Kennedy returned to Hotel Duluth where he entered the lobby and greeted more people before he retired to a suite of rooms on the hotel’s 14th floor.
While Vicki remained in the Jeep, Tom used an old photo of JFK and had me pose near the same location in front of the former Hotel Duluth. When that photo-op was finished, my photographer carried me inside where I stood on an original fountain in the lobby. As I posed for the images, I envisioned JFK as he walked through those same front doors and lit up the lobby with his famous smile. He looked happy and energetic as he shook everyone’s hand. But at that moment, not one person in that packed lobby could have dreamed that John F. Kennedy had only 59 days left to live.
That building wasn’t a huge Presidential site when compared to other historic places I had visited in the past, but I still had a bounce in my neck when we returned to the sidewalk near the front entrance. My photographer and I paused for a moment to take it all in; to envision JFK walking where we stood; when out of nowhere we heard a voice say: “I hope you didn’t get me in any of your pictures.” I looked down and saw an old woman, seated in a mobile wheelchair, who had a mean scowl on her face. Tom quickly said to her: “I hope I didn’t either. I don’t want people in my pictures.” She shot back, the second time sounded even meaner than the first: “Look, I’m gonna axe you again – you didn’t get me in your pictures, did you?” At that moment, I could feel my photographer’s inner pressure gauge was about to explode, but he held it together for three reasons: She was a so-called woman, she was in a motorized wheelchair, and she was old. “I told you; I don’t want people in my pictures. If you were in the background somewhere, I didn’t see you. You were probably blocked by the bobble head in my hand. I go out of my way to avoid having people in my photos.” Still seemingly annoyed by our presence, the cranky old woman said for a third and final time: “I live here, this is my apartment building. I have a right to be here and not get my picture taken.” Tom took a couple of steps towards her, stared her straight in the eyes, and scowled back: “I really don’t care if you live here or not. I’m on a public sidewalk and I can take pictures of that building from the public sidewalk if I choose to. I told you twice, and now I’m telling you for a third time, you are not in any of my pictures. Trust me when I say, I wouldn’t want a picture of someone like you, even if you axed me to take it.” And with that, Tom and I joined Vicki in the Jeep and the three of us headed to the next site before any Civil unrest could ignite.
A half-mile northeast from our first chaotic experience in Duluth, the three of us arrived at our second Presidential stop – the historic Kitchi Gammi Club. The beautiful building that sat within eyesight of Lake Superior was where William Howard Taft once had lunch during a visit to Duluth. That visit, which was one of hundreds of speaking engagements made by for the former President that winter, occurred seven years after he left the White House and a little over a year before President Harding appointed him Chief Justice of the United States.
The Kitchi Gammi Club was established in 1883 and was the oldest incorporated club in the state of Minnesota. The current clubhouse that stood in front of my photographer and me was built in 1912, which was around the same time the RMS Titanic sunk to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. Roughly seven years after the building was constructed, Old Big Bill Taft rolled into town on the Soo Line from Chicago. The date was February 10, 1920, and after he had a short rest, Taft went to the Kitchi Gammi Club where he had lunch. Or was that the place where he ate them out of house and home! When lunch was finished, the former 27th President saw some sights in Duluth and toured the Minnesota Steel Mill. Later that evening, William Howard Taft arrived at Duluth’s First United Methodist Church where he talked to the enthusiastic audience about the newly formed League of Nations.
During the ten minutes or so my photographer and I explored the exterior of the historic Kitchi Gammi Club, I was very thankful we were alone. Not one person axed us what we were doing, nor did anyone give us any grief for being there. It was just a quiet, relaxed visit where we paid tribute to William Howard Taft at the place where he filled his face over one hundred years ago.
Two down, and two Presidential sites remained on that late afternoon in Duluth. The threat of rain had increased as we made the nearly one-mile trip from the Kitchi Gammi Club to Duluth Central High School where President William McKinley delivered a speech on October 13, 1899.
After Vicki parked the Jeep along East 2nd Street, just south of the huge school building, she stayed in the vehicle while Tom walked to get into a better position for his photographs. As he carefully removed me from the camera case that hung around his shoulders, my right arm stayed in the bottom of the bag. Somehow, during the one-mile drive from our last stop, my arm mysteriously fell off. Had my arm been axed? Once again, I was forced to pose for embarrassing photos at a Presidential site with one of my arms missing.
But my arm wasn’t the only issue during our visit to the historic school. There was a barricade fence that surrounded the property due to an on-going renovation project. To me, that was good news; even though the reno project made it harder for Tom to capture unobstructed images of the school. Historic buildings, such as Duluth Central High School, should be preserved and not destroyed. Newer is not always better and I’m the perfect example of that. My photographer could’ve replaced me long ago with a newer bobble head after I suffered a rash of life-altering injuries, but Tom opted to renovate me instead.
I was awestruck by the beautiful three-story building in front of me, which was originally built in 1892 and occupied one entire city block. The most prominent feature of the Lake Superior Brownstone school was the 210-foot-tall clock tower that once cast a shadow upon President McKinley in 1899. I looked up at the clock and saw its hands were nearly straight up and down at 5:59; it was cool because I knew William McKinley had gazed at those same hands as he made his way to the school’s front steps. While it would’ve made our visit much better had Tom and I been able to stand on those same steps where McKinley delivered his speech, it seemed as though I could still hear his loud, clear voice from the sidewalk as the President spoke about the importance of education.
President McKinley stood in front of the huge Duluth crowd gathered at Central High and said in part: “The schools of our country lie at the foundation of our institutions. They are the citadel of our power. They constitute the cornerstone of our safety and security. Every boy and girl can have an education without money and without price. They can have an education that will equip them for every emergency of life.” In my mind, McKinley should’ve concluded by saying: “Every emergency in life, except losing your right arm in front of this school.”
The dark clouds, which had been closing in on Duluth shortly after we finished lunch, were ominous when Tom and I finished our visit to Central High School. I could smell the rain in the air, but during our eight-tenths-of-a-mile uphill drive to our fourth and final Presidential site in a row, the three of us never saw one drop of moisture on the windshield. That quickly changed when my photographer and I got out of the vehicle in front of the First United Methodist Church situated atop the scenic Skyline Parkway. As soon as I laid my painted eyes on the building, something didn’t seem right. The church, which has been dubbed by locals as ‘The Coppertop Church’, looked too new to have hosted William Howard Taft in 1920. But on the flip side of that coin, which confused Tom and I, was the fact that Taft took a sight-seeing tour along Skyline Parkway just hours before delivering his lecture at the church. So maybe it was the right church.
Tom took several images of me near the exterior of the church, all the while shielding his camera from the steady sprinkles of rain. During that time, however, both of us knew we weren’t at the right church. We could sense it. It turned out we were right. When we got back to the Jeep to keep dry, my photographer discovered an on-line article that mentioned Taft’s visit on February 10, 1920. While the 27th President had delivered a lecture at the Methodist Church in Duluth, it was a massive stone Gothic Revival church built in 1893. The sad thing was, at least for Tom and me, that historic old brownstone church was purchased by the Duluth Clinic and demolished in 1969; three years after the church in front of us had opened.
We left the not-so-historic Methodist Church as the rain intensified. By the time we were halfway through our eight-mile drive back to our hotel in Superior, Vicki was driving in a severe thunderstorm; she had a difficult time navigating the Jeep. As soon as we left Minnesota and were back in Wisconsin, however, the storm was over. I saw lightning flashes in the black sky behind us, but it wasn’t raining at the Boarders Inn & Suites when we arrived at 6:45pm.
It had been a very interesting day filled with a roller-coaster of emotions. The day began with the passionate story about the copper miners in Hancock, Michigan; my photographer and I experienced the site where Buddy Holly and his friends were stranded on a lonely highway; then we had a volatile encounter with an elderly woman in Duluth; and the day ended when my dang right arm fell off again for no apparent reason whatsoever. Thankfully my surgeon/photographer had brought his Mobile Bobblehead Repair Kit along on the trip. After all, I needed to look my best at the Duluth Armory in the morning. Nobody wants to see a one-armed bobble head standing on the historic stage where the Winter Dance Party performers played on January 31, 1959.
Tom carefully applied a single drop of Gorilla Glue to the smooth end of my severed arm and joined that limb with my upper arm. After my “doctor” held it securely in place for about five minutes, he wrapped some medical tape around the repaired area for added protection. But instead of placing me in my usual position next to the TV, Tom set me upside down in a cellophane-wrapped coffee cup where I spent the night. It was one of the most awkward and uncomfortable nights of my life.
Even though I should’ve been thinking about Buddy, and Ritchie, and the Big Bopper performing at the Duluth Armory, which was our first scheduled site in the morning, all I could envision was The Big Bill instead. On February 10, 1920, William Howard Taft stood in front of a packed crowd in the First United Methodist Church in Duluth and he thanked the citizens for their climate on that winter day. Taft said: “This day, I understand, is an average day; just as your lowest score in golf is your average score. Nine inches of snow in New York simply paralyzed it. Such an event would not be noticed by a city like Duluth.”
President Taft’s experience and memories of Duluth were caused by the cold weather in February. My experience in Duluth was caused by cold people in July; people I’ll likely never forget nor forgive. But there was one silver lining – tomorrow was the first day of August. Let’s hope the cold people of Duluth have thawed a bit.
