LAUDERHILL, FL. — The five-ton ball of rubber bands groaned and swayed as the crane lifted it from the driveway. A small frog hopped out from underneath.
“Let’s cross our fingers and hope we don’t see if it bounces,” said Edward Meyer, who bought the ball for an undisclosed sum for Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Then he called to Joel Waul, the ball’s creator. “Pretty exciting, right?” Mr. Meyer said.
“Yeah,” said Mr. Waul, 28, the soft-spoken son of a surgical administrator and Jamaican musician. “Cool.”
That was enough for him. After five years and 730,000 rubber bands, his baby — Nugget, as he used to call it — was moving on. And so was he. Mr. Waul, who works at the GAP, said he would use his Ripley’s money for stuntman school next year.
His neighbors, however, were not quite as thrilled to see it go. Here in a town where ’50s Florida homes are peeling and too many people are out of work, the giant rubber orb was a quiet comedian that could always get a laugh. No one ever tried to roll it away or deface it in the five years it took to build. Everyone seemed to enjoy watching it grow into the size of a small hatchback.
“I’m going to miss it,” said Letitta Bush, 30, one of about 20 neighbors who gathered to watch its departure. “When I give directions, I can’t say anymore that I live next to the big blue ball.”
Mr. Waul’s mother, Maureen Latham, 50, saw something even more meaningful in her son’s creation: independence and hard work. And this act of endurance did not even include pain. It was far better, Ms. Latham said, than the time he attached 76 clothespins to his face, or an incident with acupuncture that she is still too afraid to ask him about.
SOURCE: NY Times
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