Earl Kommer has many stories about Max Taubert, the service station operator in Casselton, N.D., who started the famed Can Pile.
Max and his pile of discarded oil cans, which grew to be 50 feet tall and became a tourist attraction, has been mentioned in many Forum stories.
Earl writes that he came to know Max through their mutual interest in dogs.
Earl, 81, and now of Lake Park, Minn., used to live in Dilworth and Moorhead and belonged to the North Dakota Retriever Club, as did Max.
The club members normally trained their dogs to retrieve through the use of dummies and pigeons. But one day Max showed up with a live rooster.
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He wanted to train his dog not to break; that is, not to retrieve before he was given the command to do so.
Max tied the rooster down with a rope attached to one leg, then prepared to teach his dog not to retrieve it until the command was given.
It worked, and then some. The dog not only didn't break, but he wouldn't retrieve even when told to go; Earl says the dog wanted nothing to do with that ol' rooster.
Earl also tells of the time he and Max were in Park Rapids, Minn., when a man tapped Max on the shoulder and said, "Max, I understand you have very good blood lines in your dogs, and I would be interested in maybe purchasing some of your pups."
"You and I will correspond by mail," Max told him, then turned his back on him and said to Earl, "I am not going to sell that rich (guy) any of my pups."
"We both knew who he was," Earl says. "He was John M. Olin from the Olin Mathison Chemical Corp.; he had flown in his private plane to run one of his dogs in the National Field Trials at Park Rapids, but this was for amateurs only, and Olin's dogs were trained by his personal professional trainers." Max never did sell him any of his dogs.
Max was in a hospital the last time Earl saw him. He'd been getting out of his car just as a snowplow came by and it struck him. The accident shattered Max's leg.
But even though Max's leg was "in a cast and hanging in the air, he was in good spirits and joking about the accident," Earl says.
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Max survived that accident, but died of natural causes in 1973.
Those are just a few of the pile of stories Earl has about Casselton's Can Pile man.
If you have an item of interest for this column, mail it to Neighbors, The Forum, Box 2020, Fargo, ND 58107; fax it to 241-5487; or e-mail blind@forumcomm.com
