Memorial for Pete Fugleberg
by Steven Reynolds
Addendum "Pete's Auction"
by Joe McDonnell
Pound for pound Pete Fugleberg (1949-2012) was no lightweight when it came to being a good man and friend to many people. Whether he was seen driving his ‘94 blue three-quarter ton Ford 4x4 pickup through Roseau amid a passenger-side pile of stuff, or astride his flat-black 2010 Harley Sportster at a stoplight, or sitting on his favorite stool at RJ’s bar & grill in Roseau, Pete was known to many, even if they didn’t know his name. Some young people in Roseau only knew Pete as the big old man who often fell asleep in a booth late at night at the Cenex Convenience Store in town.
Little do they know, for a big man, Pete’s size (est. 400 lbs) belied the fact that he had been deceivingly quick in his day. I saw him vault off a dogsled many times to untangle a writhing pile of wild, crazed sled dogs and get them back on the trail in no more time than it takes a man to lace his boots. Or the time when his best friend and almost-brother, Syd Skogstad, on-purpose scraped Pete’s new custom-made Redwing boots and received a lightning-fast kick in the shins for his effort.
Or the time when Pete awoke suddenly to the blast of a train locomotive’s air horn and headlight when, after quite a party, Syd stopped their car on the railroad tracks where the locomotive stood parked by the grain elevator in town. The incident made the paper, and Syd, very nearly made its obituary page.
By the early 80s, I had done various jobs around town and ended up working evening shift at the toy factory with Pete, then a hefty bull of a young man with long reddish-gray hair, mustache and full beard that was sometimes festooned with bits and pieces of steel and aluminum shavings, little chunks of snus, or the crumbs left over from a sandwich. I learned quickly that Pete either liked you or he didn’t, and didn’t mince words otherwise. Thankfully for me, it was the former as we worked in close proximity to another for that year in the toy actory machining spindle housings on two ancient lathes with eight-foot beds. Each lathe had a brass plate that read: “Approved by The War Board” on it and lent us the notion that the toy factory spared no effort providing us with the best 40 year-old tooling money could buy. Even so, ‘Foog,’ (As in, ‘The Mighty Foog,’ his nickname derived from his last name) loved the old equipment and maintained it with a fervor only matched by Syd.
Knowing proper machine operation, its precision adjustment, knowledge of raw materials and their properties were Pete and Syd’s forte; a sort of language or skill-set that set them apart from the general workforce and enamored them to others of alike mind, for example, the blacksmiths Sue Suess (THE RAVEN, Volume 10 Issue 3) and Joel Miller, of Ravenwerks Forge in Falun Township, whose intrinsic interests included crafting iron by hand; giving it their signature, making it their own singular work. But for Pete, that longing was hard to accomplish in a factory setting where parts are mass-produced by the thousands, where the same tools and machines are used by others often less skilled.
One night Pete brought a large twelve-inch diameter rock to work with him and set it on the turret with a sign that read: “Hammerin’ Helen’s,” in reference to the mushroomed steel corners of adjustment wheels on the lathe both shifts used. Pete likened the abuse of that machine to that of this individual using a rock instead of the rawhide or plastic-faced hammers we were supposed to use. Of course, his complaints to management fell on deaf ears. His rock however, did elicit attention, if not stop the damage.
The year I worked with Pete on the lathes was a real education. Even though we wore plastic aprons to shield our clothes, our feet fairly swam in our machine oil-impregnated leather boots. Our hands were as soft as baby-butts though mine were sometimes cut or burned from picking out hot curls of steel shavings from the lathe chuck until Pete showed me the right way to do it. Pete would spout machinists lingo that took me weeks to decipher as he frequently talked about being on ‘the mill’ or about sixty ‘thow’ this or thirty ‘thow’ that; the latter, a reference I learned was to ‘thousandths of an inch’ in decimals, and the former, a vertically standing metal-working machine that cut or bored blocks or plates of steel or aluminum. To say Pete literally loved machining would be a gross understatement. Working iron perfectly suited the exacting nature inside of the man who, on whose unkempt outside, wore Steger mukluks and custom-made heavy-weight denim bib overalls the year around.
It was common knowledge that Pete, in his later position as a Tool & Die Machinist, had little respect for college-educated manufacturing engineers who brought him their computer drawings of weld fixtures they wanted him to make. They illustrated the details as they conceived them, making him chuckle or reel with sarcasm after they had left. He would ignore their drawings, for the most part, and go ahead to build it the right way: his way, maybe using one-inch thick aluminum plate, yards of pneumatic tubing and air hoses, clamping devices, additional aluminum or steel he milled into holding blocks and uprights.
He would ‘trig’ the layout of his elaborate fixtures by hand, without a calculator, scribbling his figures on paper, envisioning what it was that his creation had to do, perfect everytime. After Pete built something from nothing, no one had to tweak Pete’s work like they had to do with outside vendor’s fixtures. However, Pete wasn’t fast, and that fact had long been a bone of contention with the powers that be, but Pete didn’t care. Perfection wasn’t just conjecture with Pete. His work wasn’t ‘close enough,’ it was ‘gnat’s ass’ perfect. It was one click of adjustment at a time, one draw of a flat file wielded by hand for agonizing hours on end, sometimes days.
Younger co-workers couldn’t see the point; they were schooled on computer-operated tooling and its resulting speed. Pete was an old-school craftsman out of his element in today’s fast-paced manufacturing environment. Younger employees jumped on their electric carts to service fixtures on the manufacturing floor; Pete would idle out on his, the speed of youth gone from his ailing body. The sometimes cantankerous side of his character conflicted with the increasing demands of the job and his impatience with stupid people, especially in management positions, finally ended his career at the toy factory despite his years of loyal service and machining expertise.
But that wasn’t all who Pete was as an individual, not at all. On the wall of his tiny work area at the factory were several yellowed photographs of his sled dogs and outfits along snowcovered wilderness trails or his camp and canoe on some Quetico Provincial lake in Canada or the BWCA near Ely. Some photos were close-ups of ‘his huskies or his malamutes with names like ‘Namakan,’ ‘Saganaga,’ ‘Maligne,’ ‘Kahshahapiwi,’ or ‘Kawnipi,’ among others. One I remember was ‘Cobe.’ Another simply, ‘Black Dog,’ who, if I’m not mistaken, was another of his canoe dogs he said would jump ashore at a remote campsite and alert him to the presence of bears if there were any.
Foog would grow lively when he talked about those earlier days of ‘real snow’ when he ran his teams regularly; his imagination would take him away to those days again. Everyone who knew Pete knew he enjoyed a good story, a good laugh, and was never one to drink to excess, especially in his later years.
What was noticeably absent from Pete’s company, in these later years, was one or two of his many sled dogs he’d bring to town with him. He told me one time, he had forty-one on his place near Pinecreek, a cadre he called the ‘Lost River Bush Mutts.’ Pete said his dogs howled at the CN train when it sounded its horn across the border in Canada, just a stone’s throw away. In addition to being fed a healthy blend of high protein dogfood every day, that he purchased a half ton at a time, Pete would sometimes buy large quantities of hot dogs if they were on sale, and give them to his dogs as treats.
Pete bonded with all his dogs by brushing and handling them daily from almost the day they were born. He kept his dogs in a big dog yard not far from the cabin. Each dog was chained to his doghouse where the ground around it had been excavated here and there by its high-strung resident. He cleaned their area and watered them every day, loosing one or two to run free for the duration. His dogs all had their shots against rabies and distemper; problem dogs he put down as unruly dogs were never tolerated in the yard or on the trail. Pete never married, so it appeared to me that his many dogs and the loving way he cared for them, substituted as his family in some respect.
One day, many years ago, Pete was talking to me about his sled dogs and how he would run them on the trails on Minnesota Hill. He lived below the Hill in a cabin he had built himself from cedar logs. I asked him if I could help exercise them sometime and he told me to come out when I could. All I knew about mushing was what I had seen on TV, as a kid back in the 50s, on “Sergeant Preston of The Yukon.” He had a part husky, part wolf dog named “King” that helped pull his sled and catch evil-doers. I knew Pete had to be just like Sergeant Preston if he was any musher at all and so I was all for the adventure. “Pete’s dogs were howling and barking continuously as he chose one after another for harness. Some lunged against their length of heavy chain and stood braced upon their hind legs straining for his attention. Others paced in wide-circles around their swivel tie-out stake, their chains tight.
Pete unhooked each chain one at a time and muscled a wild-eyed, plume-tailed, white fanged hyena to a neckline alongside his pickup truck. After he had picked four small wolf-like animals, he opened a box and picked out four red harnesses, each size designated by a special colored cord. The huskies cooperated thoroughly. The dogs seemed temporarily calmed by Pete’s looming presence and methodical demeanor as he put the harness over the head of each one and pulled their hard-muscled front legs through each side. Once left alone the pandemonium resumed....
Pete, working silently, dragged two sleds to the tie-out posts in the middle of the dog yard and tied a quick release snap to each. Then he laid out the black and blue-braided polyethylene tow lines and untangled the four tug lines and necklines that designated each dog’s place at the sled. He pointed out where each dog went and I unhooked them, one at a time, from the rocking truck as the other six of Pete’s team strained wildly at their necklines. I snapped each tug line and neckline and went back for another dog surprised by their instant cooperation once handled. This sudden timidness made me suspect that Pete had assembled these particularly small dogs because I was inexperienced and they wouldn’t be so hard to handle. My suspicions grew firm as he man-handled each of his six matched, big-boned Alaskan and Siberian sled dogs and snapped them into their places on the tow line of his sled a few yards from mine.
Both teams stayed parallel to the other, straining and lunging ahead against the bungee strap shock cords between them and the sleds. Their loud barking and yowling was unnerving as all around me the unchosen dogs wailed their disappointment, their chains slapping the ground as they leaped against its length.
Pete emerged from his pickup wearing a large coyote fur cap and fur choppers looking for all the world, a mountain man from Jeremiah Johnson’s era. He walked to his sled, expressionless behind a full red-grey beard and bushy mustache. Only then did I think to ask, “How do you steer these things?” Pete simply shrugged, pulled his quick release with a jerk, shouted “OKAY!” and shot out of the yard like a mini-ball from a Hawken rifle, his dogs clawing for traction.
My shy dogs turned to demons as the sled began to jerk and shake as though possessed. I pulled the quick release but nothing happened. I struggled with it as the dogs leaped and cried eager to catch the other team. I pulled against the straining dogs, afraid to let go of the sled to work on the quick-release with both hands. Suddenly it fell apart and we rocketed out of the yard, my right arm jerked to its full elastic length of six feet. I tried to hold onto the handle bow and leaped in flying giant strides to maintain my footing, I was ripped from stationary and vertical to mobile and horizontal, and just as fast yelled “WHOA!!” to stop and jumped on the brake with both feet, as we collided with Pete’s entangled team, a virtual husky-hell of howling hounds that were just beyond sight of the dog yard...”
[THE RAVEN, Volume 2 Issue 1. ”What A Ride.”by Steve Reynolds.]
Pete was always popular at Hayes Lake State Park near Wannaska when he would bring a team of sled dogs and a sled and give free rides along the park’s snowmobile trail system to bring attention to the park’s beauty in the winter. He would tell people about mushing and answer their questions about the sport.
 |
| Pete had a fondness for babies. |
In the early 90’s, when my daughter Bonny was six years old, Pete gave her his old wooden dogsled that was built on Hyfax or snowmobile-quality plastic runners, and two Alaskan husky pups we named ‘BB,’ for his one blue eye and one brown eye, and ‘Two Socks’, for his two white front feet. Bonny also had a Dalmatian at the time appropriately named ‘Black Spot.’ When the huskies got bigger we would hook the three of them up together with the harnesses and lines Pete sold me. Knowing Bonny’s penchant for drawing, Pete gave her a coloring book and a set of colored felt markers for Christmas. What a guy!
I remember Pete’s great facial expressions and humor, and the nights when he played riffs on his harmonica on the intercom at the toy factory; or the big party he threw every year at his place up below Minnesota Hill called ‘Foog Fest’ where they would cook up a pig and maybe drink a beer or two, and on whose machine shed floor “NO RICE BURNERS ALLOWED” was scrawled into the concrete.
I remember Pete who paddled hundreds of miles with his dog in lightweight Winona Kevlar canoes that were systematically packed with Duluth knapsacks and all his important gear; whose other passions included a variety of musical instruments, matching handguns, custom-made rifles and scopes and whose friend, the gunsmith Jan Miller, was spoken of frequently with respect due of a fellow high craftsman.
I know Pete’s closer friends will chronicle his unique life below Minnesota Hill for years on end, still, it’s hard to accept he’s gone from the community.
In addendum:
The Auction of Pete Fugelberg
By Joe McDonnell
“When You’re not Married, You Can Buy Anything You Want”
It would make for an evil day to be present at your own auction. To see your precious things carried away by people who had paid too little or too much. It would be sorrowful and maddening both. Though his spirit hovered over the proceedings, Pete himself had departed earlier for other wind swept plains.
Steve and I thought initially that the auction would be at Pete’s place north of Badger. But when we got there and saw no cars we realized there would have been neither parking nor room for the crowd nor expanse for Pete’s goods there. Friends and family had moved everything to a farmstead just south of customs at Pinecreek.
If you’ve never been to a farm auction in Minnesota, they work like this. First you get a cardboard ticket with your bidding number from a clerk in a little office set up in the bed of a pickup. You then get a cup of coffee from the people serving the lunch. The lunch is always set up in a garage or shed out of the sun and wind and is usually run by the local church ladies. Next you look over the vehicles, machinery and other large items ranged along the side of the big shed and the line of spruce trees. Next you make your way to the hay racks. These are flatbed trailers used to transport hay bales at low speeds, but today are used to display household goods and smaller items.
For Pete, the first thing you saw after getting your ticket was a hay rack covered with rifles in padded hard sided black cases. The crowd moved from case to case, handling the guns, hefting them, looking down the muzzle to examine the barrel. These were mostly hunting rifles, one of them being Russian and another Czech. But most of the attention went to an AK47. A different kind of hunting rifle.
At 11 a.m. Mr. Morris Vacura opened the day by explaining the rules the auction. “We will do our best to avoid confusion,” he said. Morris likes to avoid two people thinking they’ve bought the same item when the bidding is done. “The profits of today’s auction will go to the Spinal Bifida Foundation.”
The auctioneer sits in a tall topper in the bed of a pickup. Loudspeakers send his voice to all corners of the farmyard. Beside him sits a clerk recording the number of each successful bidder. Morris jollies the crowd, many of whom he knows by name with a never-ending patter. He starts the bidding a bit below what he hopes to get. Rarely does anyone take the opening bid. He drops down. “Give me fifty then. Who’ll start me off with twenty-five? Ten...” “Five!” someone shouts. “OW!” says Morris and off we go, often surpassing the opening bid. If the bidding stalls, Morris cajoles the one hesitating, who won’t make eye contact, but simply nods yes or no. It’s great fun to watch for awhile, or you can visit with your neighbor who you haven’t seen since the county fair. And then there’s always the lunch to be bought and eaten.
Morris has a pair of helpers standing on the hay rack. They take turns holding up items or cardboard boxes full of items too numerous to name. If you’re interested you would have checked the racks earlier. You can’t see now because of the press of the crowd, though some bozos try. Morris of course is watching the crowd, but if one of the helper spots a raised finger he will howl as though he had stuck a bare foot into a rattrap.
At the typical auction there are two or three racks of household goods, pots, pans, doilies, fancy salt and pepper sets, etc. I did see a couple of industrial strength Foreman grills, but Pete’s household goods were mostly tools. He had been an machinist at Polaris and he loved his work judging by these racks.
The high point of the day was the guns. “Just to be clear,” Morris said, “We’ll be selling the cases after we sell the guns. If you buy a gun that’s all you get.” One by one, the helpers held up the rifles, reading the model info from the tag attached. They also read the serial number which must mean something to those in the know. The AK47 brought the highest bid of $1100. I’m not a gun lover, but it was a thing of beauty.
Next they sold Pete’s two motorcycles. First his Russian Ural with sidecar, painted army brown. Pete was always rewiring this bike and no attempt was made to start it. “All the parts are there,” said Morris, “You’ll have a dandy machine when you get it together.” Just after had Pete bought this machine. I saw him at the gas station, proud as a new papa.
It’s a great handicap when a vehicle won’t start at an auction and the Ural went for just $2400. The 2010 Harley with four thousand miles on it started with the push of a button and went Vroom Vroom and brought in $7500.
Now it was time for the ammo. The helpers made trip after trip to the shed carrying out hu
ndreds of boxes of ammo. Pete could have set a rifle in each of his windows and held off any army for at least a week. I heard one guy say that when the hardware stores ran out of shells they would borrow from Pete. “Yeah,” his friend muttered, “When you’re not married you can buy whatever you want.”
As we moved on to final items, the dog sleds and toboggans, the 500 gallon LP tank, and Pete’s gigantic Ford Club Cab pickup with extended wheelbase, the wind dropped a bit and the clouds began to break up as though to make an opening for Pete’s retreating spirit, up onto the blue and the black heavens.
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