[SEL] Special Treat for Portland

Dave Rotigel rotigel at alltel.net
Wed Aug 17 23:47:47 PDT 2005


Got you down for SIX Keith. That makes about 75 for the ATIS dinner and 
auction! I'll tell Ellen that there will be about 90 of us in order to 
cover all those who have not indicated they will be there, but none the 
less decide to attend. See you there!
         Dave

At 12:03 AM 8/18/2005, you wrote:
>In 1898 two brothers opened a gas engine factory in Evansville, Indiana, 
>the Clarke Gas Engine Company.   They made mostly marine engines until the 
>mid-1930.  It is estimated that they only made about 300 engines.  With 
>Evansville being my hometown, I have a special interest in the Clarke Gas 
>Engines and have 5 of them in our collection.
>
>In doing research about the history of the company I found the son of one 
>of the founders still living, Berry Clarke.  He currently lives in Fort 
>Wayne, Indiana which is about an hour north of Portland.  I contacted him 
>several years ago and during a visit with him got a lot of good 
>information about the company.  He had a 4 HP Clarke engine that we just 
>finished restoring for him.  With the engine now complete I called to see 
>if he would be interested in coming to Portland to pick up the 
>engine.  His comment was something like this... "Since I'm 82 years old 
>and you have done all the work to restore the engine, and since you have 
>such a nice web page about the Clarke engines, why don't you just keep 
>it".  He even mailed me an original Schebler carburetor left over from the 
>Clarke factory.  As you can imagine I was thrilled.  To date we've only 
>been able to locate about a dozen or so Clarke engines.
>
>Here's where the special treat for Portland comes in. He indicated that 
>he'd like to visit Evansville sometime and see the engine.  I told him we 
>could do better than that and  I have invited him to come to the Portland 
>show to see the engine.  He is excited to do so and I have also invited 
>him to be our guest at the Thursday evening dinner at the Back 40 
>Junction.  (Dave, put me down for about 6 for the dinner.)
>
>There are not many people remaining who grew up and worked around the 
>factories that built the engines we collect. This will be an excellent 
>opportunity to get to meet and talk to someone who lived that 
>experience.  Please make a point to introduce yourselves and fill free to 
>ask him any questions you might have about life around an early 1900's gas 
>engine factory.
>
>To learn more about the company and engines here is a link to my web page 
>about them:
>http://www.herculesengines.com/clarke/index.htm
>
>Thanks.
>Keith
>
>
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