Red Keeps On Ticking Craftsman’S Had A Hand In Many Ventures, And Now He’S Father Time In The Tiny Town Of Clark Fork

In this laid-back town, time often seems to have stopped. This is not the fault of Arnie Gunderson. He makes clocks.

“I quit counting them at 160,” he said, “and that was some time ago.”

What little remains of Arnie’s hair is white, but he still is affectionately called Red. “I had a pretty good chunk of red hair,” he said with a grin.

A series of medical problems has slowed Red down some. “I had my heart taken out and put back,” he said, referring to heart surgery in November 1996.

Nevertheless, he continues to make several clocks a year in his workshop.

Red’s interest in woodworking “kinda got started watching Dad make sleds,” he mused, thinking back to the farm in North Dakota where he was born in 1921, the eldest of four boys and one girl.

Red’s father immigrated from Norway. His mother’s parents immigrated from Sweden. In the first few grades at the North Dakota country school, Red translated for students who spoke either Swedish or Norwegian but did not know English. Languages didn’t hold his interest. Woodworking did.

“I more or less caught hold of it as a kid,” he said, “and I’ve done a little woodwork all my life.”

As a young man, Red knocked around North Dakota, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho doing construction. Hired as a mechanic and grout pump operator for the dam project on the Clark Fork River, he moved to Clark Fork in 1951 with his first wife and four daughters.

After the dam was built, he worked for the Diehl Sawmill in Clark Fork until it closed in the 1950s. Red then worked in the woods at various jobs. In between, he built houses on the land where Diehl had operated the mill.

“The sawdust pile was where our house is now,” he said. Red has built four houses in the immediate neighborhood of his own home, and helped with two additional houses.

After the death of Gloria, his first wife, Red married Georgie, who at that time cooked at the senior center. Red subsequently was hired on as handyman at the senior center, doing “most anything that needed to be done.”

A series of coincidences at the senior center introduced him to clockmaking.

“Someone from the condominiums down on Lake Pend Oreille had come up with an idea to offer clocks as a bonus gift to anyone who purchased a new condo,” he said, “and a bunch of clocks were shipped in that were faulty. They brought them down to the senior center and asked if we could fix them. I took two or three of the faulty clocks and made one good one.”

Fortuitously, the manager of the senior center had just received a catalog of clock parts. Red found out where he could buy the inner clockworks and order clock faces that depict loons, hummingbirds, pheasants, ducks, deer, and other scenes common to residents of the Clark Fork River Valley.

He surrounded the workings of the clock with wood given to him by longtime friend Daryl Ramey.

“Daryl was working in Columbia Falls, Mont., and came home every weekend,” Red said. “He liked to do something in the evenings while he was up there and got acquainted with the owners of a cabinet shop. They had wood scraps so he asked if he could go through them. Every night he’d sort through their burn pile and bring the oak remnants home for me.”

The tradition of using wood scraps continues. Nowadays Red has oak pieces from Georgie’s new kitchen floor to frame his clocks.

Gunderson clocks have been sent all over the United States and Canada and abroad to Finland, Holland, Austria and Brazil.

“All my kids have one or two or three,” Red said.

He has donated a number of clocks to fund-raisers in Clark Fork, bringing in much needed cash for many organizations.

“I tried to win a clock for years,” local school teacher Tim Ross said. Tim’s winning raffle ticket was picked during one of the yearly alumni tournaments at Clark Fork Junior/ Senior High School.

“They’re so beautifully done,” he exclaimed. “They’re a treasure to have.”

That same sentiment could be echoed by many clock lovers in this easy-going town of 450.

Editor’s note: Last February, a column about Gladys Kendall appeared in this space. Kendall died Jan. 3. Profits from her book about pansies will go to the Bonner County hospice program. The book is available at various locations in Sandpoint or from Bonner Community Hospice at (208) 265-1179.