FOUNTAIN CITY, Wis. – Elmer Paul Duellman, 79, of Fountain City, died peacefully at home after a brief illness. He operated Elmer’s Auto Salvage and other car-related enterprises — Elmer’s Sales and Service, Bernie’s Bargains, River Raceways, and Elmer’s Auto & Toy Museum. It was the museum, at a bluff-top site above Fountain City, for which he was best known. The massive display was open to the public on select weekends. His nearby salvage yard, also massive, was a beacon for pilots when river fog obscured the Winona airport. As a car dealer at the south end of Fountain City, people relied on Elmer’s decency for a fair deal. “I’m happy to make $200 or $300 on a transaction: he said. His patience could be tried if someone pressed his instinctive fair trading. In a perhaps apocryphal tale, a customer showed up at the salvage yard and asked if Elmer had a windshield for a particularly rare Rambler. “Think so, but it’ll be quite s walk to find it,” Elmer said. After going by row after row of wrecked cars, they finally found the right model of a wrecked Rambler with an intact windshield, the guy asked: “How much?” Elmer said $16. The guy thought he would bargain Elmer down.: “How about $12?” he offered. Elmer, tired after the length search and a bit irked, picked up a crowbar and smashed the windshield. “Now it’s $12 ,” he said. There was no deal that day. Elmer was a practicing Catholic. For months every year he rounded up clothes and re-usable items, loaded them on a truck, and drove them on a samaritan mission to an impoverished Appalachian parish. He was a romantic. At home the centerpiece in the living room, polished and gleaming, was the vintage Chevrolet in which he dated his wife, Bernadette.
Details: Talbot Funeral Home
1940-2019