Warning:
If you have too many years of college majoring in subjects that make
one look down on the uneducated
people
who live in the country you will not enjoy reading this story. It
may cause acute anxiety, anger or anorexia.
The
Swedish Calabash Bowl Legend
(Antique
painted birch bowls. Do not expect this quality from TWW Enterprises)
As
the tale goes last century there were two former Swedish bachelor
farmers named Gunner Bjorkquist and Torn Castner farming near
Scandia, Minnesota who got married and had wives, Anna and Elsa,
who both wanted to go to Hawaii together one Winter. Being good
Swedish-descended husbands the guys relented and tried to make light
of the situation saying they probably couldn't catch bullheads
through the ice anyway.
While
in Hawaii the wives dragged the guys to a souvenir shop. The guys
soon tired of seeing things like signs saying “Hawaii you?” and
other touristy slogans and wandered aimlessly in the store to see if
they could find something that said “I'd rather be ice fishing”.
After a while they came upon a display of native (well at least the
sign said that) bowls called calabash bowls. The sign also
said the wooden bowls were made from an erotic Pacific tree shaped to
look like the top of a calabash gourd.
Gunner
said to Torn “I'll bet I could make dose funny lookin wobbly bowls
out of Swedish vude on my vude lade and ve could sell dem to da
tourists who visit Scandia. Dey will buy anything”. So when they
got back to Minnesota Gunner started turning out calabash bowls. He
wanted to use wood from trees like those found in Sweden but had to
settle for Red Pine (with a little oak thrown in to catch the rich
tourists). Gunner hoped the tourists would not realize Red Pine was
also called Norway Pine and start trouble. The rest is history.
The
Warped Woodturner continues this tradition with his Wisconsin version
of Swedish calabash bowls using Norway Pine made especially for the
tourists since he knows they will buy anything grown or made in
Wisconsin and his Norwegian relatives in Odin, MN told him the Swedes
are easy to fool. He also rebranded the Swedish calabash bowls as
Swedecalabash bowls to increase market share for the Millennials
since they will buy or vote for anything that sequesters carbon.
Product
Warning: It
is OK to put lefsa in these bowls but putting lutefisk in these bowls
could spoil the finish.
The
Artist
The
Warped Woodturner
(TWW)
is a local artist traveling his artist's journey in a suburb of
Springbrook, WI (pop. 536). TWW's creative calling is to use a wood
lathe to make useless objects from locally-sequestered carbon for
tourists to bring back to the city to give to people they had to buy
something for but do not like that much. His target market is the
senior citizens since their vision is not as good as it used to be so
cannot see the defects as well. His marketing jingle is: “Bowls as
simple as their creator”. Visit him at
http://warpedwoodturner.blogspot.com/
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Copyright
notice: None (who in their right mind would want to copyright
something like this?)
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