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Monday, July 19, 2010
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Customers were always Bergman's main hobby EVERYDAY PEOPLE Senior Reporter Spending a little time with Pete Bergman means being prepared for an agile mind with numerous interests and plenty of stories, some on the tall side, and taking nearly everything with a good dose of humor.
Bergman spends his days at his Air Hobbies store on Washington Street in Brainerd. His companion is a questionable guard dog and regular customer greeter - a quiet Chihuahua named Tiny. No imagination, Bergman quips of the name.
Tiny took a nap in Bergman's arms in the warmth of a July afternoon in the hobby store. Bergman was dressed in trademark red suspenders. A couple of fans worked with limited success to create a breeze.
At 69, Bergman said he is ready to retire.
"I've been around a long time," he said. "It's been a long time since I mowed someone else's yard for a quarter."
He's worked at a number of jobs and careers before opening the hobby story about a decade ago. After he recently put up signs the business was for sale, Bergman said it confused a number of people who couldn't quite grasp the concept.
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Pete Bergman sat by a model train display Friday at his Air Hobbies store on Washington Street in Brainerd.
Brainerd Dispatch/Kelly Humphrey
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"I've been selling milk for a long time, now I'm selling the cow."
Bergman said he'll miss the families and kids the most. He held up a plastic bag filled with 300 pennies one youngster brought in to
augment a purchase. He noted another example where a kid came in the store several times, calculating the price on a coveted item each trip before finally coming in with the full $23 and change.
When a young man checked in the store for a pre-paid special order this week, Bergman picked up the desired bag waiting on the counter.
"I was just going to put some big jacked-up price on it and sell it to somebody else," Bergman told him.
Humor is evident with Bergman from the stories and jokes he tells. Years ago, when he returned to Otterville, Mo., for his 35th school reunion, he joked it would have been fun but all these old people showed up.
"I haven't grown up yet," he said. "I've just gotten older."
Bergman spent much of his youth moving. He counted the number of schools he attended as a child using every finger on both hands.
Pete Bergman
Farthest point traveled: Okinawa courtesy of Uncle Sam.
Goal with retirement: Spending time in warm salt water with a fishing rod.
Favorite hobbies: He's tinkered with many of the hobbies in his own store and enjoys his motorcycle and gardening.
Book worth recommending: The Unthinkable: Who Survives when Disaster Strikes and Why by Amanda Ripley.
Movie worth seeing: 50 First Dates the 2004 movie with Drew Barrymore. Her character in the movie suffers from an injury that causes short-term memory loss. She wakes up each morning without any memory of the previous day. Bergman was struck by the idea of a person without an attachment to their own history but who finds a place with the help of someone else's love and attention.
Advice worth remembering: Read a book several times. The first time just read it. The second time highlight the important parts in yellow. The third time highlight the important parts in blue. The next time, just read the parts highlighted in green.
End of the world survival kit: Lawn lounger, bucket of chicken or barbecue and a large quantity of a favorite beverage.
If you have a person, you'd like to nominate for Everyday People, contact Sarah Nelson at 855-5879 or e-mail to sarah.nelson@brainerddispatch.com.
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"I was always the new kid on the block, that's hard."
He attended college for a couple of quarters when he was young but couldn't be convinced of its value. He tried different things, farming in Missouri, serving in the Air Force, driving a bookmobile, repairing office equipment - namely typewriters and driving a Care Cab for non-emergency medical transportation.
He said he was on his way to explore the rugged individualism promised in the Yukon when he ran out of funds about 50 miles north of Bemidji. So he went to college on the G.I. Bill. Eventually at age 36 he said he graduated with a teaching degree.
But he says he's done more teaching in the store than in the classroom.
Armed with a dramatic turn of phrase, Bergman suddenly turned from the counter with a price gun in hand saying he saved a kid's life in the store one day by convincing the potential drop-out to stay in school. Later, he said he once thought he carried a group of children from a "burning building" by convincing them to stay in school through ninth grade until one of the girls told him she still planned to drop out and become a welfare mom.
When he became a teacher, Bergman said he thought he could effect change by infiltrating the system.
"That never quite worked out," he said.
A co-worker later told him "you can't save the world if it doesn't want to be saved." At the end of the day, he said it was hard to see people ending their own chances. Bergman said these days school superintendents are judged more by the size of construction projects than by the number of academic scholarships their students earn.
Bergman said he went to Honduras to teach for a couple of years before settling in Minnesota and arriving in Brainerd for work. Eventually he opened the hobby store.
A while ago a former co-worker called to say a girl Bergman once flunked out of science, because she was smart but wasn't applying herself, had graduated from college with honors in science.
"Maybe," he said. "I did some good after all."
RENEE RICHARDSON may be reached at renee.richardson@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5852.
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