Every year, the Cushman scooters and pushcarts are a big draw at the Florida Flywheelers. Norene Blethen and her husband, Cush, love the beautiful machines, and have been set up at the show for about seven years.
Cush really is named Cushman. “It is my name, it is a family name. It is my dad’s middle name and my first name,” he said.

Cushman – the equipment company – began with cousins Everett and Clinton Cushman in 1901. Working out of their basement in Lincoln, Neb., the two improved lightweight two-cycle engines and found a way through the development of a new type of seal to help prevent compression leaks.
A patent was established in 1902, the same year the cousins filed articles of incorporation as the Cushman Motor Co., with the Nebraska Secretary of State. According to the Nebraska History website, businessman Everett Sawyer joined the company in 1909, and production shifted to farm engines.

In 1913 the company incorporated as the Cushman Motor Works and built a foundry at 21st and X streets, its present location. By World War I, farmers were using Cushman 2- and 4-hp engines to operate water pumps, cream separators, washing machines, feed grinders, concrete mixers, wood saws and generators.

In 1918 Cushman opened a plant in Canada that proved unsuccessful, and by 1927 Cushman Motor Works was owned by a management company.
 It was in wartime that the popularity of Cushman really came into its own. Cushman – the collector – said, “In the 1930s and 1940s, government orders put them on the map with items like the mailster. There is a lot of variation in the Cushman history.”

Today the company still makes golf carts and small cars, operating through its parent company Textron.

There is an amazing collection of Cushmans in Cush and Noreen’s building. A former builder, Cush said, “I started the building before the hurricanes. I was in (land development) and came originally from Bangor, Maine. I moved to Sebring (Fla.) and became a member (of the Flywheelers) in the Nineties.”
Cush began building – and when the club asked him what his theme was, he said, off the top of his head, “Cushmans.”

“I am in the cattle business. I have a ranch. I had a little Cushman truckster for the ranch. Then, I had to back up my big mouth, and bought six to eight Cushmans in the meantime,” he explained.

The Cushman vehicles were not in the pristine shape that visitors see now. “Most of the golfsters were in pretty bad shape,” Cush said.

There is a Cushman Club and because of clubs, Cush said the little machines have made a comeback: “I started buying bikes because that’s what people had.”

Jane Elliott from Godfrey, Ill., who was visiting the Flywheelers, remembers as a teen riding on her then-boyfriend’s Cushman scooter. “I had to be careful, I burned my legs,” she recalled.

If attending the Florida Flywheelers big show next February, check out the Cushman building and step back in time!

Log onto www.Floridaflywheelers.org for details.

Readers with questions or comments for Cindy Ladage may write to her in care of this publication.