Terry Shaw

Martin Ruud was the custodian at Litchfield's Longfellow school for 26 years.

He was an avid outdoorsman; so avid that he disregarded the hunting season laws and limits. Hugo came to America from Sweden with his adopted parents, the John Esbjornssons, in 1910, when he was thirteen. John and his wife Ericka had gone back to Sweden to visit John’s sister, Mrs. Swanson. Being childless, the Esbjornssons offered to take one of the sister’s Hugo Esbjornsson boys back to the States and raise him. They were given Hugo Swanson as a foster child. They never adopted him, but Hugo took their last name and eventually took over the family lumberyard in Litchfield. It was the first one in Litchfield, by the way. John Esbjornsson and Charles Ellis Peterson started the lumberyard at 100-124 Commercial Street East in August of 1869. It went out of business that winter. Silas Wright Leavett then had a lumberyard there in 1871 and he sold it back to Esbjornsson in September of 1876. John called it the Pioneer Lumber Yard. The lumberyard burned down in June of 1919 and was rebuilt. Hugo couldn’t speak a word of English, so, even though he was thirteen, he was put into the fourth grade in school to learn the language. Hugo didn’t like that and he got himself out of there and into the high school in six months. But he was a problem in and out of school, so John sent him to the Shattuck Military Academy in Faribault for two years to get straightened out. Hugo came home and graduated from the Litchfield High School. Marlon Brando was a student at Shattuck in 1941. The adult Hugo Esbjornsson would walk into Fransein’s restaurant with King, his expertly trained and beautiful Dalmatian dog. In fact, Hugo wouldn’t go anywhere without that dog. He would plop down on a stool by the lunch counter and the dog would jump up and sit on the stool next to him. No one dared to say a word about it to Hugo. The Esbjornssons were one of the pioneer families of Litchfield, they owned one of the lumberyards and they were one of the town’s elite. They were known for their great dinner parties and eccentric men. Anyway, the dog never messed with anyone’s food. It just sat there at attention while Hugo finished his coffee and sweet roll. Hugo and King were sitting in Fransein’s one day and Hugo was swearing up a blue streak. Behind him, sitting in a booth, happened to be a minister, who got up and walked over to Hugo. “Excuse me, sir, but I’m a minister of God and I don’t appreciate you taking the Lord’s name in vain like that,” he said to Hugo’s back. Hugo didn’t turn around. Instead he looked down at King and said, “Tell that preacher to go to hell, King.” King started barking at the stunned minister, who turned and left. Whenever someone had a traditional barn dance after the raising of the barn built with lumber from Hugo’s lumberyard, he would bring out a keg of beer, telling the people, “You let me know if that one runs out, and I’ll bring ya another one.” Hugo was a tall handsome man, personable, always a gentleman with the ladies and a generous man, but he did things one way and one way only, Hugo’s way. When Hugo ran his lumberyard, he delivered the lumber with a team of horses and a wagon even though there were gas engine trucks by then. It wasn’t until his son John took over that a delivery truck was bought. Hugo would go into a liquor store out of town with King and then he’d touch a bottle on a display, making sure the clerk didn’t see him do it. When the clerk would ask Hugo if he could help him, Hugo would say, “Oh well, I think I’ll have a bottle of brandy.” Turning to King, he’d continue, “Get me a bottle of brandy, King.” The dog would rush over to the bottle Hugo had touched, grab it with his mouth and bring it back to him. Hugo would deposit it on the counter in front of the stunned clerk. Sometimes he’d make a bet with the clerk and get the bottle for free. King’s head was a little lopsided from the time a car ran over it, crushing a few bones. On the other side of his head, he had a huge scar where Hugo had accidentally shot him once. They were out hunting and King had scared up a badger. The badger decided to take King on. Poor old Hugo was trying to defend his dog, but his aim wasn’t as good as he thought it was. Maybe King’s name should have been Lucky? Albert Blosser was a neighbor of Hugo’s farm, a mile east of Litchfield. In March of 1952, Albert kept thinking he was hearing a dog barking. It was getting to the point of distraction. He thought it was coming from the farm across the road from him. After two weeks of the barking, the Blossers were ready to go looking for the dog and put him out of his misery. After a warm early spring weekend, when much of the snow had melted, the barking was weaker but more distinct and clearer sounding. “I think it sounds like some dog is caught in a fence,” said Albert’s brother Ed. “I’m gonna go looking for it.” He started walking out behind their own farm buildings and passed an old eight-foot deep pit that the Blossers had abandoned and boarded up. Suddenly he heard the barking again. It was coming from the pit. He pulled the few remaining boards aside, brushing off the remaining snow and looked down to see an emaciated King staring up at him. There wasn’t much work pulling the wonder dog out of the pit. King normally had weighed sixty pounds but now weighed a mere thirty. Hugo and his wife had left on a trip to Texas and asked Hugo’s son John to look after King. But when John went out to the farm to feed him, King was nowhere to be found. King had wandered off to the Blosser’s looking for his master, who often visited the farm. King had walked on and broken through the boards covering the pit. He couldn’t get out and had lived for thirteen days on the snow, which had fallen in with him. King, the wonder dog, certainly lived a charmed life. Hugo loved to hunt, but not follow the rules, so he was always being picked up for and paying fines for hunting out of season or having too many of something. Once when he and his hunting buddies were coming back from out west with a trunk full of too many of one thing and a trailer full of too many of something else, a roadblock was set up to stop him. Apparently a game warden had found out about Hugo’s cargo and called ahead to the Watertown, South Dakota sheriff. Hugo busted right through the roadblock. Sheriff Warren Philip Welch jumped up on Hugo’s running board and Hugo just brushed him right off. The sheriff was injured bad enough that he spent the night in the hospital. This time Hugo was finally caught and arrested along with Dr. Archibald Wright Robertson, Alwin L. Lagergren, and Don Putzier, all of Litchfield. After facing the charge of resisting arrest, the group was taken to Clear Lake to face the charge of having 330 pheasants in their possession, which was 270 pheasants over the limit. They also had the carcass of a deer which they had killed on the ranch of Carl Johnson near Frankfort. Johnson had three tame deer penned on his ranch. The “Litchfield Four” spent a period of time in jail and paid some hefty fines before returning home. Hugo liked to have lots of the things he liked. He liked horses and women. He had a dozen or more horses and he had one too many wives. Well, he wasn’t married to “the blonde”, as town people called her, but he did keep another woman and even sire some children with her. Some say she was from St. Cloud and others say she was from Kingston. Hugo didn’t try to hide her. She’d be seen with him on the streets of town and he took her to horse shows with him. Irene Lindberg Esbjornsson, Hugo’s real wife, loved to entertain with big dinner parties, complete with live music. The Esbjornssons were members of Litchfield’s exclusive “400 Club”. I don’t know what that meant but there was a small circle of well to do people in town that belonged to it and entertained each other. One such party night, Hugo wasn’t around to greet the guests, so Irene showed them into the dining room by herself. Suddenly the door burst open and Hugo rode his prized stallion into the house and into the dining room. Pictures were snapped, the gloved hands of the elegant ladies petted the horse and then Hugo rode him up and down the stairs and back out of the house again. Hugo was out hunting prairie chickens with Don Putzier in Hugo’s car one Saturday morning. Some guy was ahead of them on the road in an old Model T putt, putt, putting along. It got even worse when they got to a hill. “Why, for a 10¢,” Hugo said, “I’d push that guy right up over the hill.” Don reached into his pocket, took out a dime, and threw it into Hugo’s lap. So, Hugo stepped on it, bumped into the Model T and then sped up more, pushing the T up over the hill. The driver pulled over to the side of the road and got out. Hugo pulled up behind him, got out of his car and walked up to the man. “What the hell’s wrong with you”, the man asked the grinning Hugo. “What’d you do that for?” “Well,” answered the smug Hugo, “I told my friend that for a dime I’d push you up over the hill, and he threw a dime in my lap.” “For a dime,” the driver snorted, “I’d hit you right in the nose.” Don reached into his pocket, took out another dime and threw it down at the man’s feet. BANG! Hugo took one right on his nose and down he went. He got up and came at the man and…BANG!…down he went again. “Wait a minute!” Hugo said, dusting himself off. “That’s enough of this. Pick up your dime!” With that, Hugo turned and went back to his car. He died in an Alexandria nursing home in October of 1993. He was ninety-five years old. Maybe he led a charmed life too, just like his dog King?

Bernie was a broadcaster (KLFD radio), actor (Pasadena Playhouse, Disney movie "Footloose Goose",) director of many plays and musicals and has the Community Theater of Litchfield's auditorium named after him. He died from prostrate cancer