History

The Giant Left Sock was commissioned in 1952 by Nordwall Hosiery Mills to mark the company's fortieth anniversary. The mill's Anniversary Planning Committee approved a matched pair of socks flanking the plant gates, modeled on 'Lefty,' the sock character from the company's regional newspaper advertisements. The committee's minutes note some discussion of whether Lefty was specifically a left sock, resolved by the observation that he had always been drawn facing that way.

Fabrication of the first sock — plaster over steel lath on a welded frame, executed by a Milwaukee display-fabrication firm — came in at $19,400 against a total budget of $24,000 for the pair, the overrun attributed chiefly to the heel gusset detail, which the fabricator reworked twice at the committee's request. The right sock was deferred to the 1954 fiscal year. That year, the appropriation was redirected toward retooling the mill for seamless nylons, a decision company correspondence describes as 'temporary.' The right sock was subsequently deferred in 1955, 1956, and 1961, after which it stops appearing in the minutes.

The mill closed in 1981 and the sock was deeded to the Village of Kettle Rapids for one dollar. When the plant buildings were demolished in 1987, the sock was moved 300 feet to its present site on the former front lawn. The move did not go smoothly: the crane subcontractor arrived a day early, the receiving footings were not cured, and the sock spent the next fourteen months lying on its side behind the Department of Public Works garage under a tarp, a period residents still refer to plainly as 'when the sock was down.'

In 1999, the Friends of the Sock, a committee of the Kettle Rapids Area Historical Society, secured a $12,750 state main-street grant for a full restoration, including a fiberglass overcoat and repainting. The sock was returned to its original heather gray with red heel and toe, and a small gravel viewing area with two benches was added. The Friends report the structure is inspected every third year and remains, in the words of the most recent report, 'plumb, or near enough.'

Local Legends

A persistent local account holds that the right sock was in fact built and sold to a hosiery concern in Tennessee during the 1954 retooling. No shipping record, photograph, or Tennessee sock has ever surfaced, but the story is offered to visitors with some confidence.

Mill retirees maintain that third-shift workers touched the toe of the sock on the way in for luck. The toe does show localized wear, which the village officially attributes to weather.

Some residents state that the sock leans slightly toward the site of the former mill. A 2004 survey commissioned during a routine inspection measured the lean at under one degree and declined to speculate on its direction.

The Controversy

During the 1999 restoration, the Friends of the Sock divided over whether Lefty was originally ribbed or smooth. The ribbed faction produced a 1953 photograph showing vertical ridging; the smooth faction argued the photograph showed the fabricator's quarter-scale maquette, not the finished sock. The dispute ran through four meetings and one specially convened fifth meeting before the committee voted 6–5 for smooth, with the minutes recording that the ribbed faction 'accepts the outcome but not the reasoning.'

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