History

When the missile facilities in Quillan County's northeast townships were deactivated between 1992 and 1994, the county received a federal defense-adjustment grant of $610,000 for reuse planning. During the audit that followed, the county auditor identified Ordinance 77-4, a percent-for-art provision adopted in 1977 for a courthouse annex that was never built, and advised the commission that it applied. The commission, on advice of counsel, agreed, and solicited proposals for a public artwork 'on the theme of readiness.' Eleven were received. The minutes record that most involved eagles.

The winning proposal, submitted by the Helena sculptor Doreen Stadler under the title 'Coda,' ran two pages and described 'a music box for afterward': a 41-inch tinned-steel jack-in-the-box, crank-driven, voiced to play 'Pop Goes the Weasel' once, whose mechanism would release only upon detection of fallout consistent with a general exchange. The commission approved it 3–2, with one dissenter objecting to the tune and the other to the theme. Fabrication of the enclosure went to Groat Brothers Monument & Vault Co., which cast it in ductile iron with walls eleven inches thick and a nine-inch laminated borosilicate viewing port. An engineering memorandum rates the enclosure to 45 psi of overpressure, a figure the firm supplied along with a note that no previous client had asked.

The release mechanism is a surplus fixed radiological monitor obtained from state civil defense stock and recalibrated by Bitterroot Instrument Services, whose 1994 calibration memorandum states that the threshold 'is consistent only with a general exchange and will not be approached by any medical, industrial, or meteorological source.' The sensor draws on a sealed battery bank scheduled for replacement in 2034, an item that already appears in the county's long-range budget. The jack itself is driven by a mainspring wound through a padlocked hatch — forty turns with a removable crank kept at the road department — and held by an escapement the sensor alone can trip.

The box was sealed on August 9, 1994, in a ceremony moved indoors on account of rain, the artwork itself remaining outdoors. It has not operated since. Each October the county engineer certifies readiness by placing a stethoscope against the north face and confirming the mechanism's condition, a procedure Stadler approved and attended annually until 2003. Asked at the sealing whether the lid had been tested end to end, Stadler replied that a test was not compatible with the piece, and the question is now printed on the interpretive panel, unanswered.

Local Legends

No photograph of the jack is known to exist. The face was painted by Groat Brothers' junior welder, the last person to see it, and opinion in Prewitt Bench divides on whether it is a clown or, per the fabrication drawings in the library's Stadler file, 'a figure.' The welder has been asked at every Winding since 1994 and has ordered another coffee each time.

In March 1997 a refrigerated truck carrying medical isotopes idled overnight at the pull-off, and several residents maintain the mechanism 'advanced.' Bitterroot Instrument Services reviewed the sensor log and stated in a letter that the threshold 'was not approached,' a phrase the town has never found as reassuring as the firm intended.

Some residents report a faint tick through the viewing port on cold, still mornings. The county engineer's position is that the escapement is silent by design and that the tick residents describe has not been identified. Both statements appear in the same 2011 memorandum, four lines apart.

The Controversy

In 1999 the state amusement-device program asserted jurisdiction over the piece, reasoning that a crank-wound mechanism with a pop-up figure is an amusement ride within the meaning of the statute and is therefore subject to annual inspection. The county responded that a device that has never operated, and is designed on the express premise that it never will, provides no amusement. After eleven months of correspondence the piece was registered as 'an amusement in abeyance,' with inspection deferred until first operation — a condition both parties have described, in writing, as unlikely to bind.

Visitor Reviews

Gift Shop