Lucky break gives ‘Dicey’ a new home
“Dicey,” the newest addition to the Coeur d’Alene landscape, makes itself at home along Independence Point Tuesday morning. The abandoned water tank floated to shore in March 2017 before it was recovered by city crews.
MIKE PATRICK/Press
A plaque commemorates “Dicey” and its discovery along City Beach three years ago. The reclaimed and repurposed sculpture now sits along Independence Point. (MIKE PATRICK/Press)
If the newest sculpture in Coeur d’Alene is any indication, our luck is starting to turn.
“Dicey,” a reclamation project three years in the making, was officially installed Tuesday morning. The giant steel six-sided die washed up on the shore near City Park in March 2017. Thought to be a water tank abandoned along a distant beach on the other side of Lake Coeur d’Alene, its previous owner had attached stickers to it to playfully re-create the board game staple.
“It just floated in one day,” Parks and Recreation director Bill Greenwood recalled Tuesday. “Everybody enjoyed it. We were all taking pictures of it and just having fun with it.”
After calls for its rightful owner to come forward and claim it went unanswered, the water tank that rolled doubles as a local novelty sat in a city workshop.
“We kinda got busy and just forgot about it,” Greenwood said. “One day, I happened to see it in one of our shops. Its stickers had come off: That material was so rough, the stickers wouldn’t hold … So we fixed it up to make it look like it used to.”
With one addition. It now comes with a plaque to commemorate the chance encounter, giving readers its name along with its birth story: “Dicey,” it reads, “A gift from Lake Coeur d’Alene Spring 2017.”
Crews planted “Dicey” and put the finishing touches on it Tuesday morning along Independence Point, giving passersby an opportunity to experience it in one of the last places still quasi-open to people amid the coronavirus pandemic: a park.
While social gatherings of any size have been banned and tennis courts, basketball courts, skate parks, pickleball courts and playground equipment are temporarily off-limits, people can still enjoy the parks, provided they exercise social distancing.
With temperatures projected to reach the mid-60s this week and China releasing the city of Wuhan — the origin of the pandemic — from lockdown for the first time since the outbreak began, Greenwood said sunny days might be ahead.
He said he heard Tuesday that Kootenai County’s numbers showed no positive test increases.
“Maybe our luck’s going to change,” Greenwood said.
Mayor Steve Widmyer championed its installment, echoing his Parks and Recreation director’s sentiment.
“At this point,” Widmyer mused, “I’m looking for all the luck we can get.”
