Bill & Helen Wandke's Home Page

The Courthouse Top

The past few years we have been going to Minot and Towner, North Dakota for one of our two annual vacations. Helen’s brother lives in Minot and about fifty miles east is where my oldest brother lives in Towner. This past August was no exception!

We stopped on our way east and picked up my sister, Dorothy, who lives in Great Falls, Mt. and she went with us. We took Helen to her brother John’s home in Minot and Dorothy and I continued on to Towner. I stayed the night and the next morning I met Helen, John and his wife Becky at their summer cabin at Strawberry Lake. We spent three days there and then we went on to Towner for our visit with my brother Bob and his wife Evelyn.

It is always a treat to get together with our families. One of Bob’s sons, Lowell, drove up from Fergus Falls, Mn and Bob and Evelyn’s only daughter, Donna and her husband Orrin live near by also. They have a ranch several miles out of town and Donna teaches school in Towner. They have two boys and the youngest Chris lives at home and helps out with the operation of the ranch.

On the second day after we had lunch someone suggest that we go on a tour of the city. This in itself is kind of a joke because Towner only has about 6 or 7 hundred people in it. In fact we joke about the fact that there are two exits coming off the freeway. We decided that the town is so easy to miss that you need the second exit to get there so you don’t have to drive to the next turn around!

Helen, Bob, Lowell and I made up the tour group. Lowell drove our car because he knew all the important points of interest. Dorothy and Evelyn weren’t interested so they stayed home. In fact, Bob said it was foolishness because there isn’t anything to see, he said you have seen it all when you drive through town to get to his house. Just the same we went!

Lowell took us to a few interesting places where there were very old buildings and we drove by the old house that Bob and Evelyn lived in when their new home was being built. We drove by the school where Donna teaches but resisted the urge to go up to the open window and yell hello to her.

As we were getting ready to go back to Bob’s, Lowell asked me if we had been in the county courthouse before. I told him no, and he told me about a classic old picture on the wall of a very old woman standing by her even older home, would I like to see it? I said sure and we headed for the courthouse. Helen and Bob chose to stay in the car. We went in and saw the picture as well as the rest of the things on display. Things like old office equipment, old documents and of course there were more pictures. We didn’t stay long because it was hot and we didn’t want to leave the other two out there too long.

As we left the courthouse we met a deputy sheriff going in. He greeted us and asked if we found everything we were looking for. We told him yes and before we could go on he said, "Did you should check out the top of the courthouse?" We said no and asked what was up there. He said that the round gold ball at the peak was a bowling ball. It seem that the fellow that did all the repair work was tired of going up there and replacing the metal ball that was there. Lightening had hit it several times over the years knocking it off. We thanked him for pointing that out and we would surely check it out.

We got to the car with this great piece of trivia and asked them what they thought the peak of the courthouse was. Helen didn’t have any idea and Bob didn’t even care. When we told them neither seem nearly as impressed as we were. Just the same, we thought it was quite interesting. When we got back home we had cookies and coffee and we told Dorothy and Evelyn about this great piece of knowledge that we discovered. And in all our glory, brother Bob tells us that the deputy is nothing but a practical joker and it is just something he tells tourists! I can’t speak for Lowell but I was embarrassed that this deputy had duped us. Here we were going on and on totally believing this story and it was nothing but a joke. We had to believe Bob, after all he is a serious person to start with and besides that he wouldn’t lie to us, would he?

That evening Donna and Orrin came over to visit so naturally we had to tell the bowling ball story. Now Orrin has lived here all of his life as far as I know so if there was anything to it he would probably know. I asked Orrin if it was a possibility and he just didn’t know one way or another. They thought it was interesting but neither of them had heard the story before He said that he would ask his mother and he promised that if she didn’t know either that he would try and find out and let us know. At this point it looked like the two bumpkins got taken in!

We left a couple of days later, dropped Dorothy off in Great Falls and continued on home to the Olympic Peninsula. The bowling ball thing was still on my mind. About three weeks later I got an e-mail from my brother. He told me that he didn’t know anything about that deputy being a practical joker, he was just giving us a bad time. In fact the peak of the courthouse could be a bowling ball painted gold. Now I didn’t know what to believe, my own brother doing this to me and one of his sons. We had placed his honesty over and about this innocent deputy who just trying to share the lore or the courthouse. I wondered what brought this change of heart about! I soon found out!

About two days later I get another e-mail, this one is from Orrin. He said that he had been down to the hardware store and he either asked or over heard something about the bowling ball. The one man said that it was a true story, he knew because he put it up there. The other man told Orrin that he could verify that because he had helped him do it!

So there you are, as much as I would like to think that my brother wouldn’t pull a fast one on Lowell and I, it appears that he did. On the other hand it really is neat to know that the top of the McHenry County Courthouse in Towner, North Dakota is a bowling ball painted gold!