Doodle Bug Motor Scooters are 'thrifty'!

CLEVELAND NEWS, Friday, June 5, 1942

By Tom Tarbox

Threats of gasoline rationing hold no terrors for George Fields.  He gets 200 miles to the gallon.

Now, don’t get excited.  Anybody can do the same thing.  All it takes is a flair for machinery, a basement workshop, a lot of time, a few spare parts, $22 in cash, a washing machine motor and a large share of good old American ingenuity.  Here is the way Fields did it.

First of all, be it known that Fields is a designing engineer for the Apex Electrical Manufacturing Co.  It helps, if you plan to set about getting 200 miles to the gallon of gasoline, to be an engineer.

Washing Machine Motor

“I started with a five-eights horsepower washing machine motor,” said Fields, who lives at 80 E. 208 Street, Euclid.  “I figured I could somehow use its power to get to work and back.  Then I rooted around a junk yard and got a few pieces of pipe.  These I made into a framework.  I took the front wheel forks from a child’s bicycle and cut them down and then got some handlebars from a racing bicycle and fastened them on.”  

The problem of wheels with comfortable-riding rubber tires would stump most people these days.  Not Fields.  He has two sons, Ira, 7, and John, 5—another big help if you are going to try to get 200 miles per gallon.  

“They donated the wheels and tires from their toy fire truck,”  Fields said with a grin.  “Now they are glad they did.  Here they come now.”

Sure enough.  Down the street and into the driveway of the Fields home came both boys on a motorized scooter no larger than a giant’s roller skate.

Will Ride It to Work

“I am going to ride it to work as soon as I can get a license,”  Fields said.  “First I have to get a certificate of ownership from Columbus.  In the meantime, Mrs. Fields and I use it for neighborhood calls and all the children in the block ride it.  It’s in constant use.”

Mrs. Fields, who rides the scooter along and with her husband, told how they surprised their friends a few blocks distant when, after being invited there for dinner, they dressed in formal attire and then rolled up to their hosts’ home on the motorized kiddie car.

The scooter has several Fields “improvements” in its makeup.  The emergency brake was made from an electric mangle control lever.   The exhaust pipe muffler was once a fishnet float.  The seat is half of an old automobile cushion, re-upholstered by Mrs. Fields in bright red leather.  Fields is proud of the machine’s “fluid” drive.

Fields is now working on a trailer to be pulled by the scooter.=