I grew up in Hancock County. We lived on the south side of the little creek at what is now 5337 N. County Road 25W in Hancock Country.
I see from a county map online that part of the woods is now included in that property and that the road frontage on the east side has been subdivided.
I worked summers of ’52, ’53, ’54, ’55 and ‘56 for Curtis and Enos Groves at their Sugar Creek Stock Farm located at what is now West County Road 600 North and the Sugar Creek Bridge. The Groves had a full-time, live-in hired hand named Art Ballard.
After I had worked at the farm for a month or so, Art gave me a Cushman motor scooter. He said he had brought it home from World War II.
It wouldn’t run, but I had confidence my dad, Harry Goodyear, could get it to run.
He did.
I painted it dark blue and sky blue in a pattern I thought represented speed.
The scooter would go 35 mph in second gear. It had a two-speed transmission.
Sometime after that, classmate Max Hall and schoolmate and fishing and hunting buddy George Phillips got newer Cushmans with slip clutches. Those machines ran 45 mph.
Max lived south of Mohawk on Mohawk Road, which appears to now be called North County Road 200 West. George lived on State Road 13, now Fortville Pike, just south of where West County Road 25 North curved out to a T-intersection with State Road 13.
One evening, the three of us were riding south on State Road 9 a half mile or so south of Goff’s Drive-In Restaurant south of Maxwell, when my Cushman quit.
I was running it wide open at top speed. George towed it back to my family’s home. I took the oil pan off and there lay the piston rod in three pieces in the pan.
I have written a book about growing up in Hancock County I hope to get printed before this year is over.
Budd Goodyear
Wasilla, Alaska
