Look what one buck could buy you!!!






I’m sure you all know someone who spends $1 now and then on the Lottery when the pot gets pretty substantial. Knowing that you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning standing naked on a street corner in Waupun in the middle of January – it just makes sense not to go crazy and lay down a week’s pay.

But what if you could get a sure thing for just one buck – like a room with the best view in Wisconsin? Well, actually the price starts at one buck, and if you’re the lucky bidder, you could actually win the Kennedy Lookout tower that park rangers in Park Falls, Wis., have used for years to spot forest fires.

The DNR is planning to sell the 75-year-old tower that was once among 200 manned fire towers in the north. Following a devastating fire in 1910 that consumed over three million acres of prime virgin timber in the Northwest and killed 85 people – the government organized a fire lookout network and by the late 1930s constructed over 5,000 lookout towers – with over 600 of them being built by President Roosevelt's "green army". But because of high-tech surveillance methods, the towers have gone the way of drive-in movies theatres.

The Park Falls tower has to be removed within 90 days (bids will be opened on Feb. 23), said forest specialist Gary Vander Wyst of the DNR, who said taking the tower apart is as easy to disassembling Tinkertoys. While he thinks the tower will be sold as scrap metal, Vander Wyst said he has fielded ideas for the tower to be used as a mega deer stand or a place to put someone’s mother-in-law.

Before the advent of cell phones, this tower could provide farmwives and easy way to spot hubby somewhere out in back 40 or signal him that supper was ready. Not only a means of primitive communication, just getting up and down the tower would be better than any Weight Watchers program. And it would be a great place to hide from the kids when the going gets rough at home.

While I have hauled crazier things home, I wonder what my husband would think if I bought that old tower? Hmmmmmm, I do have a few extra bucks laying around since I haven’t bought any lottery tickets lately.