Man’s skill with pelts kept wife in furs

Last week, this column talked about Bixler’s Furs in Fremont, a firm that provided stylish clothing made of a variety of animal pelts.

Among those who sold that clothing and spent years putting together and repairing pieces of fur for customers was Jim Hultgren.

His son, also Jim, but not a junior because of different middle names, remembers his father’s skill with the sewing machine and handling the furs.

“Give him a bunch of pelts and he would make whatever you want.”

Or, to be honest, even things you don’t want.

That was the case with the elder Jim’s wife, Mary.

“Dad would keep scraps and make something for her,” the younger Jim said. “He could actually make coats out of the scraps. We couldn’t afford any of those coats, but mom always had them. ... But mom hated furs.”

Regardless, the elder Jim kept meticulously piecing together those “stylish” pieces of clothing.

“Gloves, stoles, hats — about anything you could think of that was made out of fur,” the younger Jim said during a recent interview.

“Mom would never tell him (that she hated the furs).”

The younger Jim also recalls spending time at the store on West State Street just west of the intersection with Wilson Avenue.

“Mom made dad’s lunch and when I got old enough to cross State Street (from the family home on White Avenue) on my bike I used to take dad his lunch. That was like getting your first car.”

In the summertime, the younger Jim found the cooled storage area just the right place to hang out, but he had to be cautious.

“A bell would ring when the door opened, and that was my cue to stay still and shut up.”

Jim also remembered another product of the skilled tradespeople at Bixler’s. That was the burlap leaf holders that the furriers sewed together when the work on fur clothing was slow.

The leaf holders had handles on the four corners and you would rake leaves onto them to move the leaves out of the yard.

Why did you need handles?

“You weren’t supposed to drag it because then they had to repair it.”

Those are some unexpected memories of a firm that kept the area’s wealthier women in stylish fur coats, hats, stoles and mufflers during the middle of the 20th century.

The business was started in the mid 1940s and owned by Merritt Bixler, a U.S. Navy veteran who was active in First Presbyterian church, its Scouting program, the American Legion and the DeMars Club. Sadly, he died in 1960 at age 37 after an extended illness.

Roy Wilhelm started a 40-year career at The News-Messenger in 1965 as a reporter. Now retired, he is writing about the history of some Sandusky County businesses.