Uncle Eddie’s: 40 Reasons to Smile, 100 Feet to Happiness
By Heather Rule, Photos provided
Walk into Uncle Eddie’s ice cream shop in Fergus Falls, and you’ll soon see that ice cream is not the only attraction. Before you check out the taste-bud-tickling ice cream flavors, look up to see what’s believed to be the world’s longest gumball machine track!
Once a customer gets the ball rolling with a quarter in the machine downstairs near the front door, the gumball releases from the back of the shop up near the ceiling and it rolls in the middle of the aluminum rods and travels on a track that’s about 110 feet long. The colorful, chewy treat appears at the machine near the front.
Lucky customers who receive a yellow gumball (about one-in-eight odds) receive a free kid-sized ice cream treat. “The odds are pretty good,” said co-owner Anne Frustol, with a laugh. “We give away a lot of free ice cream.”
Memorial Day weekend marks the five-year anniversary of Uncle Eddie’s. But the gumball machine has delivered colorful gumballs to excited customers for the past two seasons (Uncle Eddie’s is open April through September.). So, how did this unconventional gumball machine come to be? “My husband always likes unique things,” Anne said. Co-owner Kurt Frustol agreed: “It was just one of those things. It just came to mind, and it grew and grew and grew in my head.”
While the idea came from the Frustols, they give a lot of credit to students at Hillcrest Lutheran Academy for making the special gumball track come to fruition, as they worked on it for a class project.
The Frustols purchased two gumball machines and the materials while the students made the brackets that hold the gumballs. The open track is two long rods held together by clips that were made using a 3D printer. The track is hung from the 12-foot-high ceiling with heavy-duty wire. People enjoy watching the gumball travels, or seeing how the track is put together. It’s quite the attraction. “The young kids, especially little ones, they just run right to the gumball machine,” Kurt said. Anne added that the kids get really excited when they hear the gumball release onto the track, “they go running back in the back to see if it’s a yellow. That want to follow it. So, that’s kind of fun, too.”
