Gary's gum wrapper chain, a record-breaking obsession

This is my pride and joy. This is 54 years, 10 months of work and it is the

world's longest gum wrapper chain. Okay, these are big red wrappers from the

Plenty Pack. Fold it in half. When I first met Gary, I was not aware of his

obsession with gum wrapper chains or all the other little eccentricities that he

had. Rip the wrapper in half. In the 60s when we were all making the chains in

high school, they would make them to the height of their boyfriend or girlfriend

So I can say that about 5.33 feet per day over the last 55 years I have made a

chain the height of my wife every single day over that time. I do not get

involved helping Gary in any way with his gum wrapper chain because it's a

one-person deal. Now, each half wrapper has to be folded six times. Fold in half

This is the very first wrapper that I ever put on the chain on March 11th, 1965

From that point to this point here is all one continuous chain. These

specially designed plexiglass display cases. Take each of those halves and fold it to the middle. Fold the middle together

When Gary and I started to live together, the gum wrapper chains traveled through

the house over pictures, over the refrigerator, into a family room, and I

had green, yellow, orange, the colors he used, all through the house. That was

not fun. She put her foot down one day and said, you're going to have to keep that in one room. These are some of the memorabilia

that I have collected over the years since I started my gum wrapper chain

This would be from the 1890s. This is 1935, 1994. These girls were trying to break my

record and gave up, so they sent me their chain to be added to mine, which I

mentioned I do not do. Then you take that and you fold that in half

Gary has always been involved in different things, and this really is a

soothing, soothing obsession for Gary when he's watching TV, watching sports, because sports gets him, gets his blood pressure up, and this really does help

with that. Then you've got to take the ends and fold them to the middle

You then have one link. At a hundred and six thousand, eight hundred and ten feet

it contains two million, five hundred and eighty-three thousand, three hundred and

thirty-five gum wrappers. And if you were to drive from one end to the other, doing

40 miles an hour, 66 kilometers per hour, it would take 30 minutes to drive from

one end of the chain to the other. When you've completed the link, you then add

it to the last link on the chain by carefully inserting it through and then

pushing it through. And there, I've added one quarter of an inch to the overall

length of the world's longest gum wrapper chain