Lark Toys

During our annual trip to La Crosse, Wisconsin, we stopped off at one of our favorite places: Lark Toys in Kellogg, Minnesota (just south of Wabasha on highway 61 along the Mississippi River).

We've been going to Lark for about 10 years. It has a great miniature golf course, which is about as naturalistic as miniature golf gets. The layout is extremely well planned, so that you flow very easily from one hole to the next, even though there are no visible numbers at the tee of each hole. There are several water features running through the course, and large rock formations. (No interesting kitschy items to look at or play around, but the fact that the water has been colored cyan probably could count as such, I suppose.) It's a very playable course that is well maintained -- no ripped carpeting or holes that poke up out of the green. Pretty good plantings around it, too.

Lark is known for its museum of toys, great toy stores, and especially its hand-carved carousel. While the carousel is only 11 years old, the fantastic animals could easily have been crafted in an earlier era.

A particular favorite animal of mine is the ostrich, which is not one of the animals that goes up and down as the carousel moves. Instead, it pulls a cart for small children to sit in. Along the back of the cart are several ostrich eggs, which are hatching. I couldn't get a picture of it today, though, because the light was all wrong on that side.

Here a few others.


The pelican's mouth is spilling fish.


Not just any buffalo, but the unusual (and revered) white buffalo.


Lark is all about the details. I don't remember this sign from previous trips. Note the toilet paper!

I just found out the store and all its magical contents were sold in the last year, with the founders (and carvers of the animals) retiring to Illinois. It has been taken on by a new family of entrepreneurs and toy-lovers. Good luck to them in continuing the legacy of this Minnesota gem.

Cafesjian's Carousel at Como Park

When you live in one city for a few decades, it's easy to forget the great things about it. Today I was reminded of one of our local public treasures, and found out more about how it was saved. It was a reminder of what can happen when a few people work hard to make a difference.

Some relatives with younger children were visiting this weekend, so we decided to visit the Como Zoo. By chance, we picked the carousel as our rendezvous point, and just had to go for a ride on it.


I've vaguely known about the carousel for decades, but had let that knowledge leak out of my head. Here's the short version:

It was commissioned and built in 1914 by a local man for use at the Minnesota State Fair. For 74 years it was privately owned and run, until 1988 when its owner announced that it was going to be sold at auction in New York.


A local couple, Nancy Peterson and Peter Boehm, heard this news and immediately began organizing a nonprofit organization, Our Fair Carousel, to buy the carousel. With a loan from the city of St. Paul and a lot of work, their purchase offer was accepted by the owner at the last minute (or even after the last minute -- the auction had already started and the first horse was being moved out onto the auction floor).


They spent the next several years raising money to pay back the loan. One major donor was Gerald Cafesjian, who gave more than half the $1.1 million needed. Our Fair Carousel honored Cafesjian by naming the carousel after him.


The carousel was first moved to downtown St. Paul, then later to a new, custom-made building at Como Park and Zoo.

The Our Fair Carousel website provides a detailed history and many photos of the carousel, including its rescue from a 1939 fire and restoration in the 1990s. All of the work has been done by volunteers.

There are so many things in our world that need people power to make them work. It's inspiring to be reminded of a time when the actions of just a few people became the lever that moved many more people to act for the good of us all.
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As the oddities of life would have it, Nancy Peterson is also known as Blissed-Out Grandma, author of one of my daily blog destinations.

Past carousel posts: Lark Toys

Racing in the Streets (Not Just a Song)

I live in a St. Paul neighborhood that is bounded on one side by a four-lane, divided highway. As the weather improves, it's common for us to hear cars racing in the later evening and into the early morning hours. These jerks also race on some of the city streets in the south part of the neighborhood. A few weeks ago, one of them was killed driving on the wrong side of University Avenue, which is now divided by a set of light rail train tracks.

All of that is background to a news story from our western suburbs last weekend: a dozen high-priced performance cars, driven by men aged 25 to 54, were racing at speeds over 100 mph on I-394. In daylight.

They were caught (mostly) by state troopers and ticketed. Their names have been in the paper. As far as I know, they will get only fines, and not even very high ones at that (somewhere in the range of $500).

Today's Star Tribune carried this letter, putting all of that in perspective:

I am hoping that the county attorney and local policing organizations will further investigate the illegal and terrorist activity that took place on Interstate 394 by a gang known for its life-threatening behavior involving the use of exotic and dangerous vehicles. I would also hope that we confiscate the expensive equipment it collaboratively used to avoid law enforcement and terrorize the community. The revenue generated from the auction of only one of its cars would support a community-based youth intervention program for a year.

It’s interesting that when dangerous group behavior is committed by middle-aged, affluent, suburban males, the fear generated is nil — and their behavior is described as an innocent lark. However, when less dangerous behavior is attributed to youth who are poor, nonwhite and from urban neighborhoods, the fear generated is disproportionately high — and often accompanied by demands for draconian law enforcement.

David Wilmes, Roseville

If the police can confiscate property from people suspected of drug crimes, can they confiscate cars like this from people found guilty of using them as dangerous weapons? Why can cars (and motorcycles, especially the ones called "crotch rockets") go this fast in the first place?

Daughter Number Three, 17 Years

It was 17 years ago that I started this shindig. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Since then, I've put up 6,326 posts for you, my handful of readers. Thanks for coming back.

As she turned 17 that fall, the real DN3 was just starting her senior year in high school. She had recently completed drivers' ed, but she didn't get her license until the summer after graduation. She spent fall of that year dividing her time between her small-town high school and taking classes at large public university about 20 miles away. (I've written about that here.)

But after fall semester, I had a light load, which was devoted to turning out a required term paper in English plus another one just for the heck of it, taking first-year Latin on a lark, cofounding and editing a student newspaper, and doing a bunch of other extracurricular activities: French Club, drama club, band and chorus, yearbook, and probably some other things I've forgotten.

I protest-failed gym class for one half-quarter because the teacher required us to perform gymnastics up to a certain standard. This seemed physically unfair to me, and on top of that it was absurd and incoherent to require study hall as punishment to make up for a physical deficit. But I served my five weeks in study hall, nonetheless.

I took the SAT exam early in fall, with scores that fed into confirming the National Merit scholarship I was awarded, based on my junior-year PSAT scores. The funding came from IBM, which almost always provided scholarships for children of their employees who met the National Merit criteria.

My report card shows 0 half-days absent for the first three quarters, but then 8 in the last quarter. Was that senioritis, or was I sick? I don't remember. As on previous report cards, the carbon for the earlier quarters has faded almost to unreadability. There's a class listed for the third and fourth quarters whose name I can't read and I have no recollection of, but I averaged 93% in it... whatever it was.

The school year 1976–77 saw the last few months of the 1976 presidential election — won by Jimmy Carter in November. China's Cultural Revolution ended with the capture of the Gang of Four, and Mao's death in September. By summer 1977, Deng Xiaoping rose to power. Some other notable news events: New Jersey legalized gambling in Atlantic City, the cause of Legionnaire's Disease was identified, the Space Shuttle was in test flights, Spain held its first democratic elections in 41 years, Elvis Presley died (August 1977), and French was made the official language of Quebec.

Here's to another year past, and to the next one ahead.

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 My past anniversary posts, each with an age-appropriate photograph:

• First
• Second
• Third
• Fourth 
• Fifth 
• Sixth 
• Seventh
• Eighth 
• Ninth
• Tenth
• Eleventh
• Twelfth
• Thirteenth
  
• Fourteenth
• Fifteenth
• Sixteenth
  

 

Colorful Cans in Kellogg

Two days in a row of color sequences.

Yesterday I had occasion to stop at Lark Toys in Kellogg, Minnesota. If you don't know of it, it's both a roadside attraction and a toy shop. They have a very nice miniature golf course, an indoor, handmade carousel, and a large toy store that seems to have grown a lot since I was last there. (They've added on a pole barn or two at the back, so the toy rooms keep going and going... it's a bit like the House on the Rock, though not nearly as terrible for those of us who hate the House on the Rock.)

Suffice it to say, they have some serious inventory in that shop. One room is handmade wooden toys from their own workshop. 

Along the front hallway, there are displays of classic toys and board games in an area called Memory Lane. At the north end is a case that displays something other than toys, and the color arrangement, as well as the history of commercial labels, called out to me:

You may note the pink Tab can near the top right. That's not the late 1960s design I wrote about earlier; instead, I think it's the one I would have been drinking from back in college around 1980.

Beyond the Palin on the Wikipedia

BoingBoing reports (via NPR's All Things Considered -- I missed the report, guess I was at the State Fair at the time) that a few hours before John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate, someone edited Palin's entry on the Wikipedia to make it more favorable to her.

Some of the changes were puffery (suddenly she became "a politician of eye-popping integrity"), while others downplayed her history as a beauty queen or the problems that have been reported about her in-law the state trooper.

According to the Washington Post, on Thursday, August 28, Palin's entry was updated at least 68 times, with at least an additional 54 changes made to her entry over the preceding five days.

Also according to the Post:

[A company named] Cyveilliance normally trawls the Internet for data on behalf of clients seeking open source information in advance of a corporate acquisition, an important executive hire, or brand awareness. For example, an executive updating his Wikipedia page or resume on Monster.com may be an indication of that person's plans to change jobs, or even that the company is in financial trouble.

[Cyveilliance] decided to monitor the veep picks on a lark to test the applicability of its open source methods in the sphere of politics. In addition to the Wiki pages, the company monitored chatter on other Internet sites that discussed the observations, movements and locations of potential VP candidates.

This reminds me of the way the number of bloggers getting press credentials at the political conventions went from four in 2004 to two-hundred in 2008 -- I guess this new method of forecasting political decision-making will be old hat by 2012.