Cherry sculpture marks museum entrance
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POLSON — Flathead cherry season is just around the corner. While the sweet fruit is not ripe yet, giant red cherries hanging from a yard boom in front of the Miracle of America Museum on Memory Lane greet visitors driving into Polson.
Gil Mangels, president of the executive board of MOAM, said, “Flathead cherries grow big at the Miracle of America Museum.”
The gargantuan fruit are actually the sound chamber muffler units from a Bonneville Power substation, according to Mangels, and he got them on a mountaintop over by Phillipsburg. The red globes aren’t heavy since they’re made out of fiberglass. The stems are bent 3-inch pipe, and the leaves Mangels cut from an old fuel tank with his plasma cutter.
“I had the idea one afternoon,” Mangels said, “and two days later I had them made.”
With the Flathead Cherry Festival and the Miracle of America Museum’s Live History Days both scheduled for July 21 and 22, Mangels thought his sculpture would tie the two celebrations together.
He also enlarged the museum’s cherry industry display with a collection of cherry growers’ names stenciled or written on the ends of cherry boxes, antique labels and cherry pitters, to name a few items.
During Live History Days, carvers, artists, quilters, spinners, a leatherworker, schoolhouse activities, crafts people and beaders will be on the museum grounds.
Rides in vintage vehicles and on the kids' train, sawmilling and tractors also will add to the fun.
Live History Days hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
For more information, call 883-6804 or 883-6264.
