2025, Art, books, Family, Government

Time for Coffee

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On Friday YA made our annual trek to pet deer and goats and llamas at Fawn-Doe-Rosa.  The route to get there is straight through Lindstrom, which is a pretty little town with deep Swedish roots and one of the cutest water towers ever (see photo above).  But it turns out that it’s not actually a water tower any longer. 

Back in 1992, the city built a new water tower because the original was no longer able to meet the demand.  At that time, the older water tower was “repurposed” as the world’s largest coffee pot.  A local business owner funded the conversion – adding the spout, handle and knob along with repainting it.  Initially there was a steam function but it hasn’t been working for years.

Several months ago the city council approved an initiative to spruce up the paint job and also to restore the steam function.  This time around, much of the cost was raised by the said of small water tower replicas.  Four weeks ago, the steam poured out of the pot again for the first time in years.

Just by luck, we were driving through Lindstrom at exactly 10 a.m., which is one of the two times per day that the steam functions.  YA was telling me about all this so I did a quick u-turn so we could circle back and get a good look.  There were folks hanging out on the street corners to watch as well.  It was cloudy, so while we could see the steam, I think on a clear day it would be more impressive.

A fun tangent, I recently read Off Main Street by Michael Perry and one of the essays is called “You Are Here” which is about water towers in the Midwest.  It was entertaining and I learned there’s more to a water tower than meets the eye.  Highly recommended reading.  Fun confabulation of reading and traveling!

Have you seen any fun water towers?  Ever climbed up one?

21 thoughts on “Time for Coffee”

  1. There are the novelty water towers—Lindstrom’s coffee pot, Rochester’s ear of corn and numerous golf balls on tall tees, but the water towers I like are the brick ones.
    The Prospect Park “witch’s hat” is especially notable and I’ve been up in that one. I see the Highland Park one frequently, as it’s not far from our home. The Kenwood Park water tower stands high on the edge of the bluff, a gothic sentry.

    Here’s an article about them I came across:
    https://www.minnpost.com/stroll/2014/07/there-and-then-not-historic-water-towers-minneapolis-and-st-paul/

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    1. We can see the Washburn Park water tower, which is a stone tower, from our back windows. It sits on the highest spot in Tangletown and is adorned with knights with swords. It’s a great place to walk the dog up to and back.

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    2. ive been in the witches hat and built a bunch of mega duplexs next to the castle watertower in kenwood
      bobbers on the way to leach

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  2. The blue one on the south side of Moorhead could be climbed on by hand-over-hand up the angled metal piping supports. The goal was to reach where they crossed and go down the other side. I never made it all the way there much less to any platforms higher up. Dangling 15 feet in the air was not my thing.

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  3. Driving along Ford Parkway (which has lost its meaning since the Ford plant has been razed) in Highland Park, I noticed, off to the left, a water tower such as you might see over a small town. I wondered why it was there and what it served and upon investigating discovered it seems to be on the campus of St. Kate’s. That begs the question why St. Kate’s has its own water tower. What’s its history? St. Thomas University doesn’t. The University of Minnesota doesn’t. Does St. Kate’s have an extraordinary water need?
    Carleton College has its own water tower, which I’m sure has been the focus of many pranks, but St. Olaf doesn’t.

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  4. Luverne has a pretty typical water tower, but the World’s Tallest Nutcracker is under construction at the Highway 75 and I-90 intersection. The boots and the legs are in place. The rest of it is being manufactured in Colorado. It will be about 70 feet tall.

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        2. worlds largest cow gets me every time
          i told my kids when they were little and asked how come we always stop that we have to its a rule

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  5. I’m familiar with Rochester’s ear of corn that Bill mentioned, and can’t think of any others in real life, but if memory serves, there’s a scene in The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood where the girls swim in the water tower…

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  6. There was a water tower across the street from my grandparents’ house in Owatonna when I was a kid. It was painted light blue. We called it “The Big.” We spent enough time at my grandparents’ house that I had made friends with the girl across the street.

    Of course we tried to climb it, but failed. The public works people must have realized that young kids would see it as something that must be climbed, so they put the lowest rungs of the ladder far above our heads. The only things at ground level were sturdy tower legs on concrete pads, anchored by huge bolts. There were no handholds, just smooth blue metal.

    We were fascinated by The Big – I’m not sure why. It became a landmark for our grandparents’ home, and lives on in our memories.

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  7. In 1968 I took my first teaching job in Lindstrom. I applied because Sandy had spent much of her childhood on a farm south of Center City. I was not that serious about the job but that was a year of a limited number of available jobs. At the end of the interview in April they offered me a contract to sign, which I did. It was a wonderful year. But the area was becoming a bedroom community, a series of sleepy little towns, not the busy sprawl it is now. The principal in Two Harbors asked me to come for an interview. He had exciting ideas. So I left, fulfilling a dream of Sandy’s to live on the North Shore. It was a fun year, but I was wise to leave. I have no memory of the water tower. It was not that pot.
    Two Harbors had a statue of Pierre the Voyageur outside a cheap tourist trap for many years. The business lasted for decades. Maybe it is all still going. I assume the clunky statue had much to do with that.
    Clyde

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  9. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape has an amazing cast in their early careers. Some strong performances. A hard movie to watch. A water tower features prominently in it because Leonardo DiCaprio keeps trying to climb it.

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  10. What happened to my day?

    We lived near the water tower in my home town. Immediately beneath the water tower was the tiny house of a family with 18 children. Yes, 18 children. I do not know where they put all of those kids, but they ranged over a 25 year period. Mrs. B was very young when the first one was born. That was the most distinctive feature of that particular ordinary water tower. The boy from that family in my class was known to have climbed it. True or false, I do not know.

    My grandparents in Pipestone lived across the street from that water tower which was also located next to the hospital. It became a family joke, thanks to my dad, that when we visited grandma she would climb the water tower where she would look for our car to approach Pipestone. We spent all kinds of time looking for her up there and we could never see her, while dad swore she was just right there and what was wrong with us. HMMM. Maybe that was just a story?

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  13. kevin kling told of his dads side gig painting water towers. they had special paint that wouldnt allow graffitti paint to stick to it. one summer they decided to paint their house with left over pumpkin colored paint. when they moved new owners couldnt paint their house house because anti graffitti feature made sll arrempts at new paint slide off

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