A Small Town's Identity Bound By Twine

With a population of around 300 people, the town of Darwin, Minnesota, is fairly small. But it’s home to one gigantic ball of twine. Weighing in at nearly 9 tons, the supersized twine ball is 40 feet around, and stands over 12 feet high. The ball’s creator, Francis Johnson, was a child of the Great Depression and an obsessive collector of mundane objects including pencils, buckets, and of course, twine. MN90 producer Marisa Helms reports that the town of Darwin has created its civic identity around Johnson’s twine ball.