A while back I posted about the nutcrackers in Luverne. A local retired teacher/amateur historian donated her collection of several thousand nutcrackers to the local museum. The Chamber of Commerce jumped on the idea of nutcrackers as a marketing ploy, and obtained funding to erect the world’s tallest nutcracker at the I90- Highway 75 exit. It was designed to stand more than 70 feet in the air.
After months of waiting, all the pieces of the tall nutcracker have been delivered from their manufacturer in Utah, and sufficiently high lifts have arrived to erect the pieces. I took a photo yesterday at the site:
There continues to be some mild controversy over the wisdom of the nutcracker motif as a town symbol, but many businesses on Main St. have put nutcracker placards outside their doors. The one below is outside the Green Earth Players office, a local theatre company. I think it must date from when they put on A Christmas Story.
Other entities have commissioned artists to construct nutcracker statues with different motifs around town. The one below is in honor of hunters:
Other statues honor women WWII service personnel and factory workers, as well as farmers.
As for Betty, the woman who started it it all, she is 95 and still working at the museum. Grandson and I ran into her the other week. She was somewhat in a tizzy as there were nutcrackers in storage due to getting new display cases and she was eager to get them unpacked. There are a little over 7000 at the museum now. I posted a somewhat older video to give an idea of the collection.
We haven’t any nutcracker placards or statues outside our house, but if we did, they would have to symbolize terriers or musicians.
What motif would you choose for a nutcracker placard or statue outside your house?
Trail Baboon 
Can my nutcracker be sitting on the sofa reading a book? Maybe A Christmas Carol?
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I’d like one that could knit!
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Knitting a nut cozy?
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A nutcracker dog, perhaps, or better yet a nutcracker rabbit or chipmunk, actual sized.
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We have a silver squirrel nutcracker here. Some friends got it for husband about 15 years ago when he went through his “squirrel relocation campaign,” live-trapping the squirrels, then color coding their tails with spray paint to determine if they would return to our yard post relocation.
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
Are they commissioning a Jim Brandenburg nutcracker with a camera? And a loon? The Late, Great Steve Grooms gifted me a Brandenburg print of a loon in the Boundary Waters that was in his house. I love it, and many other Brandenburg prints. What a gifted photographer he was.
I would commission a “Yard Butt” nutcracker for my house. In the 1970s-80s wooden yard butts, depicted an older woman bent over, butt to the sky, tending her garden. We used to tease my grandma in Pipestone that we would get her one and that she was a “living yard butt” because she was. Guess who does that now?
A knitting nutcracker would also be appropriate it my yard. Are there limits on the number of them we can have?
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I like the idea of a yard butt nutcracker. Nutcrackers otherwise are utterly charmless in my opinion.
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WP is in a mood, it seems
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As ever.
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For those out of state, I say this because Brandenburg was a native of Luverne and has a gallery there.
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Good grief, WP is in a mood. That was to go under my first comment.
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Have as many as you wish!
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A parakeet.
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In a pile of pieces. You can write the sign. Very blurry vision today.
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How about a triumphant nut instead?
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A Bronzil nut
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…surrounded by the shattered remains of a cracker
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A fountain with 3 peenuts.
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Deliberate spelling?
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I guess it would have to be walking around while holding a teacup… wouldn’t hurt to have a book in hand, or a recipe.
I’ll be on sketchily for the next couple of days – step-son and family are in town. : ) smile emojis : )
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I picture something like a Saint Francis of Assisi nutcracker, with birds perched on its shoulders, perhaps. A possum at its feet.
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Maybe something like this:🎵
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i used to have a nutcracker (probuly still do) the was a pair of shapely that cracked the nut up around the crotch. it didnt work great but it was fun to try
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