Tolkkinen: Greatness lies in the smallest actions

Little did I know, every time I pulled up a piece of baler twine out of the mud and dropped it in the trash, that I was missing out on a chance at greatness.

Francis A. Johnson, on the other hand, did not fritter away his chances. Taught by his mother not to waste, he began in his 40s to wrap baler twine around his fingers. For 29 years he wrapped, and wrapped, eventually amassing what Minnesotans know as the World’s Largest Ball of Twine made by one man, in Darwin, Minn.

In my younger years, I was aware of the biggest ball of twine but never gave it much thought. It was one of those Minnesota oddities like the jumbo hockey stick in Eveleth and the elephant made out of lawnmower blades in Vining. Something to marvel at for a few minutes, then go look for something to eat.

Maybe age brings perspective, or maybe it’s that the past 14 years living on a farm has made baler twine relatable, but when reader Dave Kelly of Bloomington reminded me of the giant twine ball’s existence, I found myself wowed by this guy, Francis A. Johnson, who lived in a little town 70 miles west of Minneapolis.

Did he plan to create this huge ball? Probably not. Maybe he thought it could come in handy someday, and he rolled it up to keep it neatly out of the way. Then he added another, and another. Neighbors brought him their twine, and the thing kept snowballing.

The amazing thing was how he kept focused and kept at it. Day after day. Year after year. Anybody can make a small ball of twine. It takes greatness to keep going, to recognize the possibilities, to persevere. Not just with twine, but with anything. Writing a book. Restoring an old Allis tractor. Learning a foreign language. Every four years at the Olympics, elite athletes remind us where focus and determination and effort can bring us. Anybody can dabble. I dabble. But what could we accomplish if we did one thing every day for 29 years?

Johnson’s ball of baler twine is 40 feet around and weighs 8.6 tons. It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest ball of twine made by one man. (There are four giant balls of twine in the U.S., but the others were made by more than one person.)

Just creating this gigantic thing would have been a feat. But it also put Darwin, population 344, on the map. Darwin just celebrated Twine Ball Days, which it does every year on the second Saturday of August. Darwin gets inundated with visitors. There’s a parade and a Twine K race and sand volleyball. The twine ball inspired a Weird Al Yankovic song, which came out in 1989, the year that Johnson died.

Katie Riehle, who volunteers at the Twine Ball Museum, said people come from all over the world. Just Monday, visitors from Massachusetts spent an hour and a half filming with the intent of making a music video, she said. Another recent visitor was a young man from Cameroon. Some people look at the ball for a few minutes before venturing onto the rest of the museum, which is full of stuff Riehle says she still hasn’t seen even after 21 years of living in Darwin. Other people spend much, much longer.

Riehle thinks Johnson owes at least part of his accomplishment to the lack of distractions.

“Back then they had time,” she said. “There were no electronics, no computers.”

Now, I have to tell you, learning how Johnson managed to transform a town and inspire a Weird Al song with just baler twine makes me look at our ragged bits of loose twine differently. Not that I’ll do anything differently with them. I’ll still chuck them in the garbage can. But now I’ll feel a bit guilty, like that twine could be something useful. Then I’ll open up the Sudoku app on my phone and play a few games.