1960 Cushman Allstate

Why is this listed here? It's not Italian, and it's not a car. Sure, but it is an interesting vehicle, and it is associated with an Italian car. There's a story with every vehicle..

Some time in the early 90's, during a visit to Uncle Tony, when he was still living in Pennsylvania, he took me to a friends shop. This guy was into restoring old vehicles, the most noteworthy being old Maxwells. However, he'd also gotten into restoring old scooters, and had a late 50's Cushman lying around.

I have no idea why, but I thought it seemed like a good idea, something cheap and interesting that I could throw in the back of the trailer and use to scoot back and forth at the race track. I'm sure that as soon as I sell it I'll find myself at some race track somewhere where I wish I had it, but to date I've had it for 10 years and it's only gone up and down the driveway a few times.

Anyhow...

I searched and searched, and found this one in Kansas. The seller sisn't have any pictures, but insisted it was the one I was looking for (it wasn't - I was looking for the late 50's one, which looks a bit different from this one). Now that I'd found one, I had to figure out how to get it home.

Now, most normal people would be wondering right now, "Why didn't you just have it shipped?". And yes, that would be a reasonable question to ask. However, for some reason, simply shipping it would take all of the fun out of it. There had to be a more complex (and fun) way to get it home.

That complex way turned up in the form of an Alfa, of course. I found a really nice Verde in Texas, which, like Kansas, is about in the middle of the country, but about 600 miles South (and 200 miles East) of where the Scooter was in Kansas. Still, that seemed like it was kind of on the way, so I had the beginnings of a plan. Now there were only 3 minor problems to be solved:

1) I needed a hitch for the car,

2) I needed a trailer for the scooter,

3) I was under a strict "no more vehicles" rule from Evil.

#3 seemed easy, I planned the weekend on the way back from a California trip, and made up some story about going to an automotive museum on the way. I'd be home Sunday night..

#2 also seemed pretty easy, the guy with the scooter thought he might know somebody with a trailer. That seemed good enough for me to plan a trip around.

#1 might be a little difficult, as Milano hitches are hard to find. However, the scooter guy said he could make a hitch. If I was going to trust him for #2, then why not trust him for #1 too?

Now, Uncle Tony had been wanting to some along on one of my cross country jaunts for quite some time now, so he invited himself to join me in Texas. Here was the plan - I'd leave California on Thursday night, and go straight to Texas. Uncle Tony would meet me there Thursday night. Friday morning we'd pick up the Verde (purchased sight unseen, but the seller seemed like a nice guy on the phone), spend the day Friday driving the 800 miles to North Western Kansas, where we'd spend Friday night. Saturday morning we'd be up at the crack of dawn, pick up the scooter, pick up the trailer, fabricate the hitch, and be on our way before 10:00 AM. From there we only had something like 1700 miles to get home, we'd drive as long as we could, catch a few hours sleep in a cheap hotel, start early Sunday morning, drop off Uncle Tony in Philly by 3:00, and I'd be home by 9:00.

No problem.

Of course, the first problem cropped up before we even got started. Uncle Tony's flight out of Philly was diverted, he ended up spending the night in Cleveland, or St Louis (definitely some place that was not Texas!). Not to worry, he was booked on a flight that would get him to Texas by mid morning, I'd just get started with the car and he could join me as soon as he showed up. Which he eventually did, mid morning, now all we had to do was wait for the seller to show up. You see, while the car was in Austin, the seller lived in Houston, which was a few hours drive away. So even though I was fully able to leave the check with the shop owner in Austin, all of the paperwork was with the seller, so we had to wait for him.

I felt really bad when the seller finally showed up, a six hour round trip just to say hello, sign a couple of papers, and send us on our way. But what the heck, we still had an 800 mile drive in front of us.

We were on our way around lunch time, with Uncle Tony taking the first driving shift. We hadn't been on the road very long, heading North out of Austin, and he was doing over 100 mph, making up time. He noticed a police office quickly approaching from the rear, weaving in and out of traffic. Damn! On the road for 30 minutes, and bagged already! However, before Uncle Tony could even slow down, the cop passed us and was on his way. I made a joke about him being in a rush to get to a donut shop before break was over, and yup, you guessed it, a few minutes up the road there he was, along with a few other police cars, at a donut shop!

It was around this time that Uncle Tony told me he had told his work to expect him back on Wednesday. Wednesday? You've got to be kidding me! Why Wednesday? Sure. Let's look at things, we're buying a car we've never seen before from a person we don't know, we've got to drive 800 miles, buy a scooter from a complete stranger, fabricate a trailer hitch, find a trailer, then drive another 1700 miles home. We should get there around Wednesday, maybe Tuesday is nothing goes wrong..

Anyhow, I was going to have none of that. I had a plan, and I was sticking to it!

We kept up the pace, then I took the next driving shift. Some time around 8:00 in the evening, Uncle Tony wanted to stop for a quick bite to eat. Now, Uncle Tony was born and raised in Philly, and didn't quite understand that time passed at a different rate in the Mid West. In the Mid West, there is no quick bite, there is no quick! But as much as I tried to explain this concept, he simply didn't believe me, and insisted on stopping at the next Pizza Hut. I guess some people just have to learn things for themselves.

The fact that it took us almost 10 minutes to get seated in an almost empty restaurant should have been his first clue, but all it did was give him time to look at the menu and have his order ready as soon as we were seated. He ordered for both of us. The conversation went something like this:

Uncle Tony: "Hey, listen, we're in a rush, we know what we want - one quick salad and one <I can't remember the other thing, but it was cold and easy>, and two Cokes. Hurry!"

Waitress: "Um, what do y'all mean by 'rush'?"

Yes, there we were, in a hurry and everything, and the waitress wanted us to take the time to define the word 'rush'.

An hour later we got out of there, Uncle Tony going nuts, and me just grinning..

We finally made it to Oberlin Kansas around 2:00 in the morning, where we had to wake up the woman who ran the hotel to let us into the room. One bed, but even if Uncle Tony was Angelina Jolie, I didn't have enough energy to do much more than brush my teeth and pass out on the bed.

6:00 AM came pretty quick (gee, there are some things that happen quickly in the Mid West!), we stumbled out of bed, showered (separately!), and met Calvin at 7:00. Now, while Calvin wasn't the scooter owner, he was the guys boss, and he was going to fabricate the hitch for us. As you might imagine, this process went pretty slow.

Don't get me wrong, Calvin was a pretty talented guy, he just worked at about the same rate as everybody else down there. He measured everything up, came up with a pretty simple hitch design, and started bending and welding. He'd weld up a couple of beads on the hitch, then wait for things to cool. Uncle Tony hinted that in Philly they dipped things in water, which sped up the cooling process, but Calvin just kind of looked at us like we were speaking a foreign language.

Meanwhile, I went to look at the scooter. After getting over the fact that it was the wrong scooter, I did realize that it was still pretty wacky looking, and not being one to go home empty handed, I agreed to buy it. The seller appeared with a trailer, which was very heavy duty (full sized truck tires and axles on a small utility trailer), so we were good to go.

Um, except for Calvin. He was staring at the hitch, watching it cool...

Right around noon we were getting close to wrapping things up, the hitch was in the car, and we only had a few wires to connect. At which point Calvin announced it was lunch time. Oh God, please not now! Calvin, I'll buy you lunch, please just let us finish this job quickly and get us on our way! But Calvin would have nothing of that, so we went dow town for a quick bite to eat, then returned to finish the wiring.

All of which put us on the road around 3:00 in the afternoon. Now, we're on the wrong side of Kansas, with 1700 miles to go, and roughly 30 hours in which to do it.

I'd like to write more about our adventures over those 1700 miles, but the fact is, there were none. Oh, we did outrun a BMW M3, which must have really pi$$ed him off (remember, we were pulling a home made trailer with a scooter on it!). And we didn't have time to stop and sleep that night. Uncle Tony knew up front that he couldn't go all night, so I got some sleep while he drove in the evening and then I took the night shift and got us through sunrise.

We got to Philly right around 3:00 in the afternoon, I dropped off Uncle Tony and made it to the barn around 9:00, where I dropped off the Verde and the scooter/trailer, then headed home. Evil had caught on to the fact that I was buying something, so a week later I took her to the barn to see the scooter.

Now, keep in mind that I already had a black Verde, and I'd just bought another one, and they were pretty much nose to nose in the barn, at a 90 degree angle. She walked right between them to the scooter, completely ignoring the fact that there were now two black Verde's, and her only comment was "You drove that all the way from Kansas? You're crazy!".

Which pretty much sums it up, right?

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Last updated November 19, 2006