BAXTER — It was a final good-bye for Don McFarland Friday as statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox were hauled away from Paul Bunyan Bowl in Baxter to move to their new home in North Carolina.
Paul Bunyan Bowl, located at the Excelsior Road and Highway 371 corner, closed its doors in July and McFarland recently held an auction to sell off various items.
McFarland is the owner of the family business that once included the Paul Bunyan Amusement Center which was sold eight years ago and then moved east of Brainerd. The family business also owned the bowling alley and bar/restaurant. McFarland ran the amusement park for 25 years. It was originally opened in 1950 by his wife, Patti’s family. Today the amusement park is located at This Old Farm, east of Brainerd on Highway 18.
“It’s discouraging,” McFarland said of the businesses closing. “This should have never happened. It’s disappointing that we’re losing Paul Bunyan from Brainerd. It’s very sad.”
McFarland had to make the decision to close the bowling alley because of the economy and said “the city’s taxes and fees on the commercial property killed us.”
McFarland wouldn’t say how much the two statues sold for, but said the minimum bid for Paul and Babe was $4,000 each. McFarland said when he purchased Paul in 2001 from a company in Missouri it cost him more than $6,000. He purchased Babe in 2004 from a local artist and it cost him around $5,500.
McFarland said the company in Missouri had about 100 Paul Bunyan statues, but he said Brainerd has the only talking statue.
A North Carolina company, Original Log Cabin Homes, purchased the two statues.
Randy Marsh, a hauler for Original Log Cabin Homes, said Tom Vesce, owner of the company has a Paul Bunyan statue, but he always wanted the ox to go with it. Marsh said Josh Porter, an artist who created several versions of Babe the Blue Ox in the Brainerd lakes area as well as the Paul Bunyan at the Welcome Center south of Brainerd on Highway 371, contacted the company about the auction of the statues.
Marsh said Vesce adopted Paul Bunyan as a common logo for a company.
Aspen Signs in Merrifield helped Marsh load the two statues. It took them three hours to get the statues loaded. Babe was loaded with ease, but there were problems getting Paul Bunyan off the concrete sidewalk.
JENNIFER STOCKINGER may be reached at jennifer.stockinger@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5851.
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"there were problems getting Paul Bunyan off the concrete sidewalk"
That's because he didn't want to leave. : )
A sad reality...
"McFarland had to make the decision to close the bowling alley because of the economy and said “the city’s taxes and fees on the commercial property killed us.”
Very sad indeed.
Please closer attention...
The area is evolving. Businesses will come and go. Why? Consumers.
In the 1950s the west area of Brainerd was the destination and land available.
As a Paul Bunyan Center Employee in the later 70s and early 80s, the
parking lot was quite large and was very full.
We're now into 2011 and into the destination and land available.
Am I sad about what is leaving on what I worked at? Absolutely.
The McFarland family looked at the economic options and it was not bright.
I cannot blame them for their decision. Painful yes.
Government engines (officials and non-elected decision makers) will look at their options and make a "dice role, best guess".
That's how it works folks.
Elections are how you change things.
Elections are about who you can elect.
Some of us, who own property in Crow Wing County and cannot change the
elections.
We have a decision. Pay the taxes or sell.
That decision point to many of us non-taxpayers is still "yes",
including many of us who lived in the Brainerd Lakes region years ago.
Many of us non-taxpayers still enjoy coming the the Lakes Region and supporting the business owners. My family personally does.
Don't continue the arguments into a "no" and ask us to leave.
In other words, paying higher taxes than many of the residents.
In general, us non-taxpayers are not enjoying any of the services we're tax levied on.
Now that I'm one of them.
I got an interesting comment...
How are the students of your area doing and now that you are a non-resident
tax payer. Interesting comment.
In other words, the person I was chatting to, was a non-resident, and wanted
to know how his tax dollars were spent in the lakes region to improve things,
including the business owners and economic engine.
thanks
thanks for all the memories-many good times. taxes on brainerd business's are toooo high-record unemployment 4 years running-so sad. no future yet.
Sometimes inertia sets in and makes it hard for people to do
Sometimes inertia sets in and makes it hard for people to do what needs to be done, and sometimes we get a kind of "nostalgia inertia" too. The whole Bunyanland phenomena fit right in with the 1960's and was still viable in the 1970's. But growth and sprawl made the location too valuable, as well as no longer having the sense of seclusion it once did.
McFarland's might have been able to keep it all alive in a different location, but that might have been a hard decision, especially if they were growing weary of the whole enterprise; sometimes it takes sheer willpower and the boundless energy that comes with it to pull something like that off. That investors weren't begging to get in and help probably says plenty.
McFarland's made a little money for years, made money as they sold parts of the operation off and don't think for a second that what's left will stay empty forever. They won't starve.
If Brainerd lakes area has lost it's way, doesn't really know how to define or defend itself, I don't know how to do anything about that. Crosby-Ironton did too, in the 1950's and 1960's as mining gave way. Life goes on...
Agreed Eyolf.
I have a post now suspended for being too long.
Under review.
Times change.