Dennis McCann: And out of the sky comes ... a Manitowoc festival!

Originally published Sept. 3, 2008

Last week I was a guest on Wisconsin Public Radio for a program about fall travel, so I armed myself with all the usual suspects – your Coloramas, your Oktoberfests and Octoberfests (never mind that most are in September) and all manner of Harvest Fests featuring apples, pumpkins, cranberries and more. Throw in beer and cheese festivals and you have the perfect Wisconsin balanced meal.

They can be fun, but even so let’s give it up for Manitowoc for coming up with something entirely different, a new fall festival dedicated to Sputnik, the 1950s-era Soviet space rocket that lit up the Cold War.

And which left a historic hole in a downtown Manitowoc street one surprising night in 1962.

Manitowoc isn’t the only Wisconsin community to develop a celebration over things seen in the sky. Belleville, outside of Madison, and Elmwood in western Wisconsin both celebrate UFO festivals, showing that even unexplainable and improvable sightings are reason enough to tap a keg and throw a party.

But at its first Sputnikfest (http://www.sputnikfest.com/) this weekend Manitowoc will be celebrating an event that can both be explained and proven, and which has secured the city its asterisk moment in the great space age.

It was on Sept. 6, 1962, when two city police officers, Ronald Rusboldt and Marvin Bauch, discovered a glowing chunk of debris embedded in the middle of North 8th Street. Logically, they first assumed the glowing scrap of metal had come from a local foundry, but it was eventually established that it was instead a chunk of Sputnik IV, which had been launched by the Russians in 1960 but which, by 1962, had developed fatal mechanical problems and had plunged back to earth.

The 20-pound chunk of Sputnik that was found in Manitowoc was big news for the city, as you would expect, and a historic moment to be preserved. While the original fragment was eventually returned to the Soviets, two replica fragments were given to the city and the crash site on 8th Street was given a brass marker. One of the replicas is at the Manitowoc Visitor Information Center and the other at the Rahr-West Museum, adjacent to the spot where the Sputnik chunk was found.

This weekend’s festival will take place in the vicinity of that spot, and feature not only Manitowoc’s historic moment but the Space Age and Cold War as well. There will be the usual food and drink and entertainment, but also a sci-fi film festival, Miss Space Debris contest, re-enactment plays and even a specially brewed Sputnikale.

There won’t be – and good for them – a single mention of Oktoberfest.