I am back from the wilds of southern Geogia.
About this time each year I go on a pilgramage to the sterotypical Southern town of Cochran, Georgia. Spring has arrived there, and the weather and flowering shrubs were beautiful.

We spent most of the week at the the Southeastern Cushman Club meet know as "Scooter Week." There were hundreds of collectors there and most brought several scooters.

I had not planned to enter any scooters in competition, but as they were setting up the show, I noticed that one class had only one entry. It was the "Rat Cushman" class. This is a class that is set up for the ugliest, rattiest, tackiest of Cushman scooters. Since the most recent models are now 39 years old, and 50-year-old Cushmans are common, you might think that there would be a bunch of ratty looking scooters there. After all, most of us work hard at finding each and every abandoned relic from the golden age of motor scooters (1936 - 1965). But most of the scooters at the meets are beautifully restored, and are magnificent far beyond how they looked when new.

So there sat one lonely, rather ratty looking Cushman Highlander, circa 1961, the only entry in that class. It belonged to my friend and almost-neighbor, Charlie. It was rusty and dented, and there on the front fender was a life-sized, almost life-like rat cast in gray plastic. It was held there by two phillips screws, on through a plastic front foot and the other through a plastic hind foot.

It looked like a winner until I got an inspiration. ("Why heck, I have a scooter just outside the door that looks at least that bad.") Like Charlie's Cushman Highlander, my Cushman Pacemaker (circa 1953) runs great but looks baaaaaaaaad. So I wheeled it in and entered my Pacemaker in the rat class. It looked like a toss up, but the plastic rat turned the tide and Charlie won. Just wait 'til next year.
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