John Fluevog

FLUEVOG


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      on me as a child and for a long time after that. Even now.

      John Fluevog is born to parents

      Sigurd and Ruth in Vancouver, BC.

      He has an older sister, Karen, and

      two younger siblings, Gail and Glen.

      To future generations, May 15 will

      become known as International

      Fluevog Day.

      MAY 15, 1948

      1948

      24

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      My parents grew up in rural Alberta farm country—

      Dad in Irma and Mom in Kinsella—but my grandparents

      were pioneers in the truest sense of the word. My

      father’s parents came from Norway and homesteaded

      in South Dakota and Minnesota before heading up to

      Alberta. Their name was originally Nielsen, but there

      were so many other Nielsens in Minnesota, the mail

      kept getting mixed up. So my grandfather, Nikolai Tobias

      Mathias, changed it to Fluevog, which was inspired by

      the name of the tiny hamlet back in Norway where the

      family came from. There’s also a little lake up in Alberta,

      near where my grandparents homesteaded, called

      Fluevog Lake. I never met my father’s folks, though I

      wish I had. They died back in the 1930s when my dad

      was in his twenties; my dad always told me his mother,

      Gina, died first, and then his father died of heartache.

      My grandfather was tender-hearted, and I think I’m that

      way myself.

      On my mother’s side, they were Dutch and German

      with a bit of Irish thrown into the mix. When he was

      just eight years old, my grandfather, Ben Wachter, drove

      horses and mules along the Oregon Trail all the way up

      to Wilbur, Washington. He eventually became a farmer

      in Alberta and worked building the railways. He was

      truly a pioneer. My grandma, Clara, was a big, imposing

      woman who came from St. Louis, Missouri, and after

      she married Ben, she stayed home to look after the

      house and family. When we were kids, we’d go on lots of

      road trips to the farm. It had no running water or paved

      roads, but tons and tons of bugs. It was as natural as

      can be. In summer, it would get so hot when we were

      driving, we’d cook chuckwagon dinners on the manifold.

      At Christmas, it would be too cold to drive to church,

      so we’d go out with the horse and sleigh.

      My parents met skating one day back in Alberta.

      Sigurd was seven years older than Ruth, and both

      were ready to marry; in the end, they had fifty-four

      mostly happy years together. My mom was a good

      cook, generous host, talented seamstress and bit of a

      poet. My dad was a great mechanic and really smart, so

      smart that during the Second World War, he was sent

      A (very) young John Fluevog

      discovers his love of cars in his

      dad’s garage, where Sigurd sold

      cute Hillmans from England.

      1951

      My grandparents were

      pioneers in the truest

      sense of the word.

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      to Bella Bella, a remote village in the rainforest along

      the British Columbia coast, to decode secret Japanese

      messages. My sister Karen was born up there. After the

      war, they moved to Vancouver, where my dad opened

      his own garage near the Kootenay Loop, at Hastings and

      Boundary. He loved anything that had wheels and sold

      these cute English cars called Hillmans. I’ve inherited

      his love of cars and all things mechanical.

      In 1952, when I was just four years old, he opened

      a soft-serve ice cream place on Kingsway in Burnaby,

      British Columbia. It was called the Luxury Freeze

      Drive-In and it became a real scene. Everyone went to

      the Luxury Freeze. They’d go to socialize and, most of

      all, to show off their cars. There were lots of custom

      cars loaded with fashion statements like fancy grills

      and doodads and dingle balls. Cars were a real status

      symbol in the 1950s. You could be unpopular, but if

      you had a cool car you could get a pretty girl to drive

      around with you. My dad and I shared a love of cars,

      and by the time I was ten, I knew everything about

      every model that would pull into the drive-in. Now

      I realize that’s where I kind of developed a feel for

      shapes and lines and the feelings they create.

      I spent a lot of time hanging around the Luxury

      Freeze. My dad was basically my babysitter, and as I

      watched him work, I learned a lot from him, both what

      to do and what not to do. He did everything by himself.

      He never hired anybody. He considered it evil to spend

      the money when he could do it himself. Besides, he

      always thought he could do things better himself. It

      wasn’t always true, of course, but he did teach me one

      of the most important lessons of my life: If you want to

      do something, you just start. There’s nothing you can’t

      do if you really want to.

      The Luxury Freeze was super successful, not just as

      a business, but as a place where my dad could spread

      the gospel because, of course, he was still a good

      Christian. My parents were good-looking and could

      have been a real power couple, if they’d wanted to.

      Everyone knew my dad. Everyone knew Sig. He talked

      to everyone and, by the time I became a teenager, that