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Who
Saved The Cushman Scooter Chapter
Five Hi
to all my Cushman friends out there.
Before we start on this next chapter of Who Saved the Cushman
Scooter, I want to say how happy I am to see the Technical articles that
Jim has taken the time to put together for all of us on his web page.
Thank you from me, and all of those that these articles help. Now
lets get back to where we left off in the last Chapter. When I notice
that this man had a pickup truck full of chrome shrouds for the
scooters, I introduced myself to him and he said that his name was Cliff
Tompkin. He asked if I was the one that had been buying the scrap
Cushman parts. When I told him I was he asked if I wanted some of the
shrouds. When I asked how
much he said, "no charge, I have more than enough, and I am happy
to share with you". Because we had water-cooled the Cushman motor
for our racing, the shrouds were of little value to me, but Cliff wanted
me to take ten of them, which I did. This was the first of my dealings
with Cliff Tompkin, a man who always treated me very fair and honestly.
I have been to his home many times, and I especially remember one Sunday
he invited me to have lunch with he and his family. That afternoon he
traded me 100 new Cushman crankshafts for a new 3 wheel ATV that the
company I worked for was manufacturing. I will not go into the amount of
NOS parts Cliff had, because that is his business, but my stock was a
drop in the bucket compared to Cliff's. I will say that Cliff would
always share when Cushman would dump NOS parts at Northwest, many times
he would tell me "I heard they are getting rid of this or that, do
you need any? If so, I will get some for you". Now that is a
friend. When I told Cliff that I thought all the NOS parts that Cushman
had left over had already been dumped at Northwest, he said no, and he
took me to the Cushman Sales and Service building, and introduced me to
George Hametz. George
was in charge of this operation for Cushman and would play a big part in
my quest to buy more NOS Cushman parts. I will tell you more about him
in our next chapter. Cliff Tompkin also took me to the Cushman Surplus
Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, and I found they had hundreds of NOS
Cushman parts there, and they did not know what they were. So here was
yet another source of parts that Cliff told me about. On
a number of occasions Cliff heard of others who had picked up parts at
Northwest and now wanted to sell them. He took me to several and I was
able to buy almost 100 more crankshafts. For a good number of years I
saw Cliff at the National Cushman meets selling parts out of his pickup.
It has been a number of years now since I have seen him, but I
understand that he is still selling Cushman parts. I would have to name
my friend Cliff Tompkin, as one of those people that saved the Cushman
Scooter. Your
California Cushman Friend, Bob
Jungbluth |