Harvey, North Dakota: The Mighty Og (Gone)

I purchased Og at an auction when Rawhide City (a tourist attraction in Mandan, North Dakota) went bankrupt. Og was built by a man named Bob Watts, owner of Rawhide City. I went to the auction with a little of the venom of the night before (tequila) and bid against two cities that wanted him as a mascot. In my state of mind I would not allow that, as I didn't want to see Og leave the great state of ND. As did Custard when he went to South Dakota, he wound up dead. My intention was to put Og on top of our family farm equipment business, Lelm Implement Inc. your CASEIH and New Holland dealer Harvey North Dakota. He was never owned by a hardware store. I was unable to haul Og myself due to his gigantic size, so I hired a house mover out of Carrington ND. A man by the name of Gerald Lutman moved Og from Mandan N.D. to Harvey only after I hired a crane to pick him up and lay him on a house moving trailer modified by the Lutmans to accommodate Og. It was a long, slow, roundabout way to Harvey because of his massive size. The people that constructed our building would not honor their roof warranty if we put Og on top of the building. The moving of Og attracted a lot of attention by almost all of the news papers in N.D. It then hit the associated Press, the phone rang off the wall as many radio stations from across the United States called and wanted to do live interviews on the moving of Og, his size, and plans of what I was going to do with him. Og sat idle behind our business for several years until I was offered a spot to set him along Hwy 52, I felt this was a great place for Og as he needed to be in the public.

There is a giant gorilla torso on the south edge of Harvey, ND, on US HWY 52. He used to be on top of some business in Mandan, ND, then was sold to someone in Harvey. The waist-up gorilla is placed in a pasture, shaking his King-Kong fists at the world. It almost makes it worthwhile to drive the two-lane roads from Jamestown to Minot.