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TODD MELBY

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    Listen to the Bouncing Girl tryouts, where 20-somethings and grandmothers vie to fly high at the Winter Carnival

    Photo courtesy of Minnesota Historical SocietySt. Paul Winter Carnival blanket toss, 1887


    The St. Paul Bouncing Team is a show stopper at parades around town, including Saturday's Torchlight Parade at this year's St. Paul Winter Carnival. People are enthralled watching the lithe women being tossed high into the air and caught by men holding a blanket.

    Listen to the Bouncing Girl tryouts that took place at the Landmark Center on Friday, Jan. 25.

    Listen to the Bouncing Girl tryouts that took place at the Landmark Center on Friday, Jan. 25.

    Becoming a "Bouncing Girl" (some prefer the term "Bouncing Queen") is no easy task. It's not like jumping on a trampoline. It's more unsteady. And there's plenty of competition. On the upside, no one has been dropped since the event began in 1886.

    From young 20-somethings to grandmothers, this year's tryouts showed that old and young alike like to fly high.

     

     

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    Todd Melby
    Illustration by Hugh Bennewitz

    minnpost.com/toddmelby


    Todd Melby is a reporter and radio journalist. His stories have aired on BBC Radio 4, NPR's Day to Day, The World, Marketplace, Chicago Public Radio and elsewhere. Locally, he writes about architecture for the Building Minnesota blog and Minnesota Monthly. He's won an Edward R. Murrow award and a Sigma Delta Chi award for radio documentaries he produced with Diane Richard. He's also the host of "Listening Lounge," a program dedicated to radio documentaries, which airs Mondays at 7 p.m. on KFAI. He can be reached at tmelby [at] minnpost [dot] com.

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