Julie Buntjer / Daily Globe
Lloyd and Clara Fuerstenberg stand at the entrance to the building that once housed their motorhome. Now it is filled with Lloyd’s collection of wrenches, tools, bottle openers, shoe horns and other unique items. (Julie Buntjer/Daily Globe)
On a quest for unique wrenches
Wilmont farmer amasses large collection in retirement By Julie Buntjer jbuntjer@dglobe.com WILMONT — Lloyd and Clara Fuerstenberg farmed for many years on the outskirts of Wilmont, raising crops in the field and 11 kids on the farmstead. With that many children, they had little time for things like vacations and hobbies. Now, the couple has discovered retirement is pretty nice. They spend their winters in southern Texas and the rest of
their time in Wilmont. The transition from farmer to retired status wasn’t an easy one, though. As Lloyd points out, it didn’t take long after his retirement in the mid-1990s for Clara to tell him he needed a hobby. “So, I found a hobby. It’s better than sitting in the liquor store,” he said, standing inside the doorway of a building that once housed the couple’s motorhome.
The walls of the long, tall structure are now covered in Lloyd’s hobby — collections of antique wrenches that grew to collections of antique and unusual tools, bottle openers, shoe horns, whatchamacallits and thingamajigs. A few steps into the building, Lloyd points to the pieces that started it all — a set of old Oliver wrenches once owned and well used by his dad. It isn’t a complete set,
but Lloyd hopes it will be one day. He’s missing just two of the wrenches — the RP206 and the RP209. “We had Oliver tractors growing up,” Lloyd said. In fact, Olivers were what he used all of his farming life. It wasn’t until a year ago that he bought something different — a C Farmall. Though Lloyd may have stayed true to Oliver over the years, his collection of wrenches spans all
tractor makes — Ford, Case, Farmall, John Deere — and other brand names as well, including Dayton, Hudson, Morrison, Cadillac, Gale and Maxwell. One wrench has “Le Roy” etched in it — it’s the only one Lloyd has ever found with that name. Few have the sentimental value, though, than the Oliver collection. In addition to the wrench set he hopes to one day complete,
Lloyd was able to purchase a pipe wrench also owned by his father at one time but passed on to another brother. When it came available at a farm auction, Lloyd placed his bid to keep the wrench — and “a bunch of” other tools — in the family. “I don’t care how rusty they are, they get cleaned up,” Lloyd said, detailing a cleaning process that
WRENCHES: Page C3