Kulger's collection adds interest to downtown wall

by Mary Le Arneal
publiched 10/28/09

Greg Kugler has a good perspective of North Bend. From his downtown apartment over the Pour House, he can keep an eye on just about anything going on.

Others can keep an eye on his collection of antique saws along the side of his apartment.

Greg Kugler lives in an apartment in downtown North Bend, where he displays some of his antique collection.

Kugler, 51, has been a collector all his life, something he says he inherited from his mother. As a youth he collected Hot Wheels toy cars and bottles. Now as an adult, his collections have grown.

For fun Kugler likes to go to auctions and buy things for his collections. Some of his collections you can see outside his apartment: his ice saws, wood saws and pulleys. But that is not all. He rents the building west of the North Bend fire station to store his cars - including his high school car, a 1970 Mustang Mach I - and other large items he has purchased at sales and auctions.

“I like to tinker with them,” Kugler said about his collection.

Occasionally he will show friends what he has but mostly his collection is for his own enjoyment. He also has a storage place in Schuyler for more of his “stuff.”

Not only does Kugler go to auctions to find things for his collections, but he also goes to swap meets and trades for things, or to earn money to buy other items. Kugler said he is like a kid in a candy store at a swap meet.

On his business card Kugler also list scrap metal as one of his jobs. He likes to clean up old farms where there is always an scrap iron pile or two.

“Old scrap metal piles are a good resource,” Kugler said. “I like to go through them and find treasures - a wrench or some small tool that made it into the scrap pile.”

One of Kugler’s best finds was at the bottom of a scrap pile where he dug into the earth and found a rooster shaped windmill weight. He cleaned it up and took it to a swap meet, where he got $600 for it.

Kulger said the physical work of going through scrap iron relaxes him. What he doesn’t add to his own collection, he sells.

“My friends say I buy junk and sell antiques,” Kugler said with a laugh. “I like unusual stuff you don’t see a lot of, but I am cheap.”

Kulger’s other collections include yard sticks, marbles, old petroleum oil cans, gas pumps, horse shoes, horse bits, wooden pulleys and pocket knives.

Kugler says he enjoys living in downtown North Bend. His family moved to town from LaVista when he was 12. Before that Kugler would visit his aunt and uncle, Art and Nanny Bliss, at the old Bliss Lakes, now called Willow Wood Lakes south of town. Kugler grew up in that house after his parents bought the Blisses’s home.

After high school, he worked in Rogers at a grain elevator then went to Omaha where he lived “long enough to find out I didn’t like the big city.”
He then worked with his brother-in-law, Bob Leftwich, for 26 years at Phoenix Foam in North Bend. In 1988 he started working for Classic Cars in Hooper before starting his own fiberglass shop in Rogers, Kugler Custom Auto, in 1996.

He likes the opportunity to share his collections with others. Drivers passing through North Bend southbound on Main Street can see part of Kugler’s collection tacked to the wall south of the auditorium. At his builiding west of the fire hall, he displays an old tin Coca-Cola sign. Kugler said he likes to have his stuff out for people to see and enjoy.

Meanwhile, Kugler plans to keep on collecting.

“I’d die if I quit collecting,“ Kugler said. “It’s an addiction.”

<<Back to the archives page