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Who Saved The Cushman Scooter Chapter
8 The
year 1976 was a year of deciding where we were going with the Cushman
parts. Yes, we had made enough off of our sales to buy my wife Merrie
her new washer and dryer. But now she could hardly get to it, our
basement, garage, and every spare bit of room had Cushman parts stored
in it. Since
there was still little demand for parts from scooter people, and the
number of those running the Cushman motor in our Micro racing had
dropped, I place a ad in our monthly racing paper, " The Pit Stop
", to sell our parts. Nothing came of it; I had several racers that
wanted to buy some parts, but not all of them. In
1978, one of my Cushman friends told me he had seen an ad for someone
buying, and selling Cushman parts. I called Paul Covert in Dothan,
Alabama, and explained what I had in the way of parts and what I wanted
to sell, and he was like a kid in the candy store, " I will take
them " he said. My
first of many sales to Paul cleaned out much of the Truckster and
transmission parts that I had bought from George Harnetz, and the 1,000
pistons, all of my stock of 2 5/8 and 2 7/8 inch bore pistons, and many 3 inch bore ones. A list of the parts I sold Paul is in
our first letter in this series. Over
the next 5 years I sold Paul Covert another 2,000 pistons, as well as a
great deal of parts for the aluminum OMC scooter engine, many more M9
blocks, rods, and over 100 NOS part number 876355 clutch hubs with
linings. Paul tells about the 2 1/2 tons of parts he bought from me to
start his business in our Cushman Club of America magazine May - July
1993. I
met Paul for the first time at the first National meet held in Lincoln,
Nebraska. Paul was a salesman; I think he enjoyed meeting and helping
people with their Cushman problems as much as selling the parts. Paul
had some parts that I wanted to buy at the Lincoln meet. All day while I
was selling parts he would come over or I would go over to where he was
selling, and we would discuss the price.
He did not want money; he wanted some of my parts, but always a
little more than I wanted to give. When the meet was over I gave him
what I thought was a good offer for his parts and he said "here,
take them, you have help me so much, I want you to have these two chrome
shrouds for your Eagle Scooter " Yes, I could have had more of
these if I had asked Cliff years before, but now the scooter bug had
bitten me, and would never let me go. Paul ran a great Cushman parts
operation, but he could be hard nose about price when he had to. I think
back at the thousands of miles he and his wife Shirley drove to find and
buy NOS parts, and many times find the parts were already gone. He spent
hours finding people who could make mufflers, sheet metal parts and
things that we needed to put scooters on the road again. Paul help save
the Cushman. Your California Cushman Friend, Bob Jungbluth Ed Note: See Bob's ad below and guess what it would worth today!
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