Cushman fans meet here

by Karen E. Culp

SBJ Staff

As preparations for 15,000 Gold Wing road riders began in Springfield, riders of a different sort were warming up the pavement at the Ozark Empire Fair's E-Plex.

Cushman Motor Scooter enthusiasts chose Springfield as the site for their annual Cushman Club of America convention. Local businessman Robert Cantrell, who co-owns Cantrell-Barnes Printing with his son, helped organize the event. His company publishes the group's member magazine.

The convention was expected to draw 1,200 Cushman enthusiasts to Springfield. It began June 14 and ended June 17.

Cushman scooters were made between 1936 and 1964 in Lincoln, Neb., as replicas of motorcycles.

Cantrell has been collecting the scooters since 1982. As youth, his older brother had a Cushman.

"We just rode the wheels off of it. I guess I've been fascinated with them ever since," Cantrell said.

The early model scooters were two-horsepower engines, and later models had eight-horsepower engines. Though they had their recreational applications for kids in the 1950s and 1960s, after World War II they were often used as transportation, and, prior to that, by the military, Cantrell said.

"After the war, the automobile industry had not gotten back into full swing, so these scooters were transportation for a lot of people," Cantrell said.

A basic Cushman Eagle scooter can cost about $1,000 to $1,200, and a collector can spend "as much as he wants" painting it, and adding accessories, Cantrell said.

Dale Stenger came from Avon, Ind., to attend the Cushman convention. He estimated that he had invested about $4,200 in his 1959 Cushman.

"I get a lot of ideas from these conventions. You see people doing a lot of wild things with the painting and so forth. The scooters are a lot of fun to tinker with," Stenger said.

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