MPR: Darwin's Legend is Entwined in String

Darwin's Legend is Entwined in String
By Marisa Helms
August 11, 2000

Darwin is a tiny dot on the central Minnesota map. Many of its 250 residents say that dot got there because of one man's obsession. For 29 years, Francis Johnson created what became the largest twine ball ever rolled by one person.

Eleven feet high, 8.7 tons, 40 feet in circumference, from 1979 until just a few years after its creator's death in 1989, the twine ball was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest ball of twine. It has since been surpassed by another record holder.
(MPR Photo/Marisa Helms)

DARWIN RESIDENT FRANCIS JOHNSON died 11 years ago, but his old friend, Vernice Olson, still treasures his work. Vernice sits in the shade of a little park just off mainstreet in Darwin. She and about a dozen friends and neighbors are here to muse about a huge, 50-year-old twine ball looming just a few feet away, encased in a glassed-in gazebo.

Eleven feet high, 8.7 tons, 40 feet in circumference, from 1979 until just a few years after Johnson's death in 1989, the twine ball was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest ball of twine. It has since been surpassed by another record holder. But Darwin residents are quick to point out, their twine ball is still the largest ball of twine rolled by one person.

"When he got it so big and it started to get oblong, he would take railroad jacks and jack it over and turn it so he that could again wind it," recalls Roger Warner, chairman of the Darwin Community Club.

Francis Johnson's obsession was coveted by others. Johnson's nephew, Harlan, says there was a minor battle over the ball about 10 years ago when a representative from Ripley's Believe It Or Not tried to wrestle the ball away from the city of Darwin.

"Darwin didn't let them have the twine ball, so they had to go home without it," he says. "We went back to our house that night and tried to make him feel better and they did get the 1700 nail aprons."

Twine Ball Web Site

See more pictures of the twine ball.
(MPR Photo/Marisa Helms)

Harlan Johnson explains his uncle's obsessions didn't end with the twine ball. Nail aprons are the little waist aprons worn by carpenters. Johnson was a prolific collector of odd things - like the nail aprons - that nephew Harlan inherited and has had to auction off over the years.

"At one of the sales, we had between 400 and 500 hammers. There were 7,000 wooden pencils."

Harlan says his uncle was kind of a rascal, a big kid, very firm in his beliefs. His work was the most important thing in his life. In addition to the twine ball, Francis Johnson made tens of thousands of pliers from bass wood. They are made from one single piece of wood - no glue or nails used. They open, close and look functional, but they're not. They're sculptures, like totem poll carvings. The smallest was whittled from a match. The largest is eight feet long with 27 little pliers hatching from its handles.

"At the same time he could be watching the news, he could reach over, unconsciously, take the cover off from a coffee can, reach over and take a blank. And reach over take the box for the knives, and make one two three of those while he was watching the news for 45 minutes or an hour and never knew he did it," nephew Harlan says.

But the biggest attraction Johnson bestowed on Darwin, the thing that put Darwin on the map is the twine ball. Johnson was the son of U.S. Senator Magnus Johnson. He worked for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, and later as a carpenter. He never married. He died at 85 years old from cancer and emphysema. His relatives say the emphysema was caused by the twine's hemp fibers.

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