MOB News

Alan Nacke’s Eating Meeting

Monday October 3, 2005

On a Monday October 3, 2005, Alan Nacke held an informal meet at his home along the Wabash River in nearby Battleground, Indiana. Alan lives on a quiet tree lined street that is on the Wabash River. His garage is across the street from his house and is a real nice two bay garage, fully insulated, heated and packed with old iron and plenty of Martin Motors. You see, Alan is the MOB resident Martin Motor go-to guy. That is not to say that all you will see is Martin Motors in Alan’s garage as you can see by the pictures provided in this article. You will find other motors in his collection, from British Sea Gulls to Lockwood’s to an Evinrude Detachable.

Alan opened his garage to about 8 of us MOB’sters who brought items to play with. He also has members who live close by and make the Monday Motor Madness a weekly event. Tim Irwin came up from Greensburg, Jim Hickman came from Anderson, my son, Chris and myself came up from Indianapolis to play along side Dean Chapman, Terry Aeschliman both from Galveston, Doc Fontaine and Lloyd Pelfrey from nearby Monticello, Indiana.

After the tour of the garage and grounds, we got started on our work party; one by one each of us brought something to work on or test run in the tank. Jim Hickman started out the afternoon by working on his newly acquired 1937 Bendix single. Jim didn’t have to do much to get the motor started as the previous owner had properly stored and serviced the motor. Jim had the motor purring like a kitten in the test tank after getting the carb adjusted correctly. Dean and Terry were working on a parts motor consisting of parts of a Johnson and Evinrude 3 melding together to make one motor of different colors. I brought a Johnson OA-55 and a 1924 Johnson A to run.

After fooling around with the old iron, our stomachs told us it was getting close to supper time. Alan and Lloyd had planned on a chicken liver fry along with French fries. Alan coated the livers with batter and Lloyd cooked enough chicken livers to feed an army. Now some of the guys didn’t care for chicken livers so they brought something else to eat. Alan has a nice little patio area off of his house and we sat under an umbrella and ate dinner until we could not eat any more. The talk of old motors and the tasty meal was something I will remember for a long time. We could have spent the rest of the night chatting, but there were more motors to run and some of us had long trips back home. After helping clean up, we adjourned back to the garage to get one last fix of blue smoke. What a great afternoon we had and I just want to say “Thanks Al”

Al plans on having this meet again next year about the same time so I am looking forward to this event again.

See Ya On The Water,

Rick Eichrodt