The picturesque Portland suburb of Fairview cutlery-cently welcomed an enormous fork that, at 37 feet from gleaming handle to quad-pronged bottom, is the very largest on Earth. Yes, Fairview has always been a knife town to visit, but now it’s the plates to be!
It’s even larger than Australia’s most massive forks, so just imagine the size of the potatoes you could skewer with it. Although I wouldn’t want to be tasked with doing the dishes afterwards!
Despite being truly colossal, the silver stunner has un-fork-tunately been relegated to the furthest reaches of the cutlery drawer that is East Portland, far from Harvey the Rabbit and Paul Bunyan.
Apparently there’s a food market next to it sometimes, with disappointingly normal-sized produce for sale. When I visited, however, the place was barren and windswept, with barely a dozen well-wishers admiring the Big Fork.
I guess the local council didn’t want to fork out for more expensive real estate.
A forks to be reckoned with
Why a fork, you ask? Over to you, eccentric local mayor, Brian Cooper!
“So, the fork came about because we wanted something on the corner, whether it was a water tower or a windmill or some sort of piece that’s going to be on the corner, and then one of the design teams said, let’s just put a fork here and we’ll come back to it,” Brian explained to an exasperated reporter from KATU-TV.
“Over the course of a couple months, it just kind of stuck in the brain. And you can come up with an entire marketing scheme of ‘Take a left at the fork,’ ‘The Fork in Fairview.’”
Fairview has done just that, rebranding themselves as Forktown, USA. Fork enthusiasts from across the globe descend on this charming suburb to worship their most beloved utensil.
They’re often pleasantly surprised to discover it’s larger than they’d imagined, which is always a pleasant experience.
“The stainless steel fork is actually 40 feet tall,” blabbered Ken Fehringer from P&C Construction, “but its four tines will pierce the ground by about three feet. The fork has a large F stamped into its handle. Whether that stands for food, fork, or Fairview is up to the beholder.”
If I was a lesser-mannered individual I’d suggest it stands for ‘F’n huge’, but I’m not crass so let’s just go with ‘fabulous’.
Taking the spring out of Springfield
As the good people of Fairview dance in the streets, basking in the glow of their record-busting scrap of metal, the warm-hearted forks – sorry, make that folks – of Springfield, Missouri have been plunged into a desolate depression from which they may never emerge.
That’s because the pride of their town is a 35-foot-tall fork that was, until recently, the largest in the world. A huge fork, by any means, but no longer the grandest on the planet – and that means everything to the Americans.
Springfield, Missouri has dropped out of most lists of top 10 US holiday destinations. The direct flights from San Forkcisco, the Forkland Islands and New Fork City have been reduced to just four or five a week.
Even the gift shop is facing forklosure.
Their Fork, which once drew crowds so large they would stop traffic, is now surprisingly easy to take a photo with. If you do, suggest rolling up and pretending to be a meatball!
But that’s just the circle of life when it comes to oversized roadside attractions. They grow, capture the world’s imagination, then fade away into the background as the next Big Thing comes along.
My suggestion to the people of Springfield is that they build a really big spoon, just to stir things up!
