My dad, Chap Spencer, was hired by Ole Evinrude to work at Elto in 1928 after breaking a worlds record racing in 1927. Elto became part of OMC in 1929 and dad worked in Evinrude's experimental engineering department. When problems surfaced with the electric starters in the early '30s, Dad was sent by engineering on an information gathering expedition. When thank you letters began coming in, thanking Evinrude for having such a knowledgeable person at there disposable, Jim Webb informed Dad he had created a new career and was now a factory representative. This prompted a move from Milwaukee, where I was born across from the Evinrude Factory, to Detroit, which was close to the center of his territory. (Michigan, Indiana, Ohio. western Pennsylvania, and northern Kentucky. We moved when I was a year old, so I don't remember much of those times. I did see pictures in the family album of mom, dad, and I on the Evinrude yacht, the Bess Emily III. (Bess Emily was Mrs. Evinrude's name.)

I grew up in Michigan, where dad bought property on Houghton Lake in 1935. The log cabin "we" built there was finished in 1936, My contribution was picking up the bark that was pealed off the logs and making boats out of the chips that came from notching the logs to fit them together. Since there were no roads at that time, the logs were dumped in the lake where the county road intersected the shore, and were then floated down to our property. We always had boats and Evinrude furnished the motors. After a winter of storing boats on the front porch, it was decided we needed a garage. The 2-1/2 car one was also built of logs, but it has some how never seen an automobile. We did manage however to squeeze in 8 boats, a canoe, a sailboat, and 8 outboard motors. One was "My Little Boat" which dad brought home from the New York Boat show of 1936. When I learned to swim, I was rewarded with a larger craft, a 16 foot Wagemaker Wolverine powered by a new Evinrude 2 horse power Sportsman. I watched dad uncrate it and was full of questions.

The motors in those days came with the spark plug in the tool package with the pliers, screw driver, wrench, and instruction book. A cork kept the oil put in for storage from staining the new motor and the instruction book said to pop the cork and install the spark plug. I thought it such fun I wanted to put the cork back and do it again dad said. I ran that Sportsman up and down in front of the cottage and thought I was King of the lake. I learned how to mix the gas and grease the lower unit. I could clean the fuel filter and spark plug with the best of them. Art Robins owned Robins resort where the county road met the lake. He had a dozen Evinrude Sportsmen powered row boats he rented to people who rented his cabins and visiting fishermen as well. Whenever I saw one of his renters having problems with the outboard I would motor over and start the Sportsman for them. Art noticed this and called me over for a proposition. He offered 50 cents a week if I would take care of showing renters how to operate the motors.

I did this for the rest of the summer. I also took over mixing the gas and checking out each motor for fish line on the propeller shaft and grease in the gearcase as well. I took out my pay in penny candy from Art's bait, souvenir and snack shack. Many years later Dad said Art told him the complaints dropped to zero when I did this. He said they may still have had problems, but I made it look so easy, they were ashamed to admit they had trouble. This convinced me I wanted to help people when I grew up. At this time outboarding was very slow after the summer season. Dad got September, October and November off as a vacation. There was a Christmas push in December, and January was a rush of boat shows to introduce the new outboard line and size up the competition. I never missed a Detroit boat show (Dad got free passes from Evinrude). I started school in the Markey township one room school house at Houghton Lake. In December we went back to Detroit and I transfered to Guiton School on the East side of the city. This continued until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Then we rushed back to Milwaukee for the duration of the War.

Times were tumultuous and we moved three times while there, so I want to three different schools. At the same time I got reacquainted with the people at Evinrude. Evinrude made parts for the Storm Boat Motor, the heavy duty Lightfour, the Norton Bomb Site and some aluminum parts for the Radar in the Black Widow Night fighter. The engineering department was working on a new alloy for magneto magnets and Dad brought home some rejected magnets that had been damaged in the insertion machine. Sometimes we would have people from the plant over - Jim Webb was always good for some old outboard stories. Fred "Father" Bauman, "Irgy" Irgins, Ralph Evinrude, Bob Scott, Denny Watkins, Howard Larson, Art Sauerburg, Carl Germaine, Bruce Davis, Harry Ewald, Bob West and others I have forgotten. Talk of the war, and talk of the work to end it - and talk about when it would be over. Everything was in short supply and dad was good at ferreting out things Evinrude needed to get the job done. People dad knew that had modified parts for race motors now built parts we needed for the war effort. People who had a lathe in their garage had neighbors operating it 24 hours a day. One of the neighbor boys was sad because his Dad was shot down while flying as a volunteer for the chinese Air force - I later found he was one of the Flying Tigers fighting the War before we were even involved.

With the signing of the treaty ending the conflict came the rush to convert the factory to peace time production, We left Milwaukee but could not get the people we had rented to move out of our house. We moved to Houghton Lake and I enrolled at the consolidated school on the south side of the Lake. A new adventure, riding a school bus. I got a Navy surplus Light four that had been used to train mechanics. It had stripped threads and broken parts, but still had machine marks on the cylinder walls. My first restoration. I got into hot rodding outboards. A lot of the neighboring kids were also interested and we started a boat club. We regularly had one of the gang"s outboard apart trying to figure out how to make it go faster. I worked at Jack's Boat and Sports Shop part time and repaired outboards. We had moved back to Detroit and after Guiton, I enrolled at Detroit University School and took as an elective drafting and Machine Shop Practice . I was also on the DUS rifle team, wrestling team, and football team. One of my friends, Paul Brown bought a surplus Storm Boat and I took the motor into the school shop and rebuilt it to Racing 460 Specs. At the same time Paul built a hydroplane for it in his dining room. Paul was undefeated in his racing, even beating an inboard hydroplane said to be going 85 miles an hour. (I got an "A" in the course) In appreciation Paul gave me my first good camera. I also got a part time job at Boats and Motors Inc. on Mac Avenue, doing the repair work and closing the store.

Back at the lake I raced my Lightfours in class "A" with a variety of boats. The last was a 9' 4" molded ply Wolverine. I did my freshman year at Washington University in St. Louis Missouri in Pre Med. I transfered to Wayne State University for my second going for Mechanical Engineering. I was drafted at the end of the that year for duty in the Army Artillery for the Korean conflict, taking communications training at Fort Sill Oklahoma. I got married to a girl I met in high school and returned from the service with a darling baby girl that my wife Roseanna named Faith Ann. Jim Webb offered to give me a job on a work and study program where they would pay for expenses at The University of Wisconsin and a small salary to work at the plant and all I had to do was work for them for 5 years after getting my degree and then could do what ever I wanted. Of course what I wanted was to work for Evinrude. Rosie would not hear of it. We had our first fight and she said those argument ending words "If you really loved me, you would do what I wanted." So I got a job as assistant parts manager for the Evinrude parts distributor for Michigan. Somehow she never forgave me for not making the money an engineer could. So I worked two jobs for ten years. By that time we had 6 children. I quit Wards where the outboard work was seasonal and went to work for Ford Motor Company which seemed more steady.

I started as a sweeper at 15 cents an hour less than I made at Wards, but quickly found a better job as a machine operator. Evinrude repairing was put on the back burner when a opening came up in Quality Control. It required an exam, which I thought was pretty straight forward. I got a message to talk to the head of quality control and he told me I didn't have enough seniority to get the posted position but he wanted me in Quality control and was posting a position for me to apply for. I was surprised and asked why he would do that. He replied he had been giving that test for 30 years and I was the first to get a perfect score. So I became a floor supervisor in Quality control at almost three times what I made at Wards. I quit my second job and Rosie made me babysitter and she got a job, to get away from the kids which she claimed were driving her nuts. A few years later she brought her boyfriend home and threw me out. It was a very contentious divorce. Her boyfriend couldn't understand why I didn't like him and gave me the names of four people she had been dating at her work. I finally moved to Florida in 1968. I was service manager at Land-O-Lakes Marine, located on the corner of highways 41 and 52 for a while. but also worked in air conditioning and auto repair. It was in the AC job that I met the woman that was to be my second wife. She promised 28 good years for the 14 bad the first had given me. Diane proved to be a woman of her word.

Thinking electronics was the wave of the future, with Diane's encouragement I got a degree in electronics and went to work for Honeywell Aerospace in 1976. (I built my first computer in 1975) I was laid off at the end of 1989 and found myself in competition with engineers laid off from the Kennedy space center for the job of washing dishes at McDonalds. (It seemed I was "Overqualified" for all other work.) Diane swore the layoff was because of her horrendous medical expenses. I was later injured in a bicycle accident and became disabled. Later still, Medicare allowed the operation (Which my HMO, "Met Life" had deemed "cosmetic" and did not cover) that converted me from disabled to retired. (I have been a staunch supporter of Medicare ever since.) I found the Antique Outboard Motor Club in 1996 while attempting to replace Dad's autographed copy of Jim Webb's "the Pictorial History Of Outboard Motors" which had been stolen. I have been a happy contributer to this web site ever since. Diane was killed July 23, 2000 - I went to my first meet in 2002

Having grown up with Evinrude and Elto, they are my area of knowledge. As a child, Johnson was a dirty word and Mercury was an expensive Ford. Clintons and Eskas were lawnmowers on a stick, while West Bend, Elgin, Scott Atwater, Firestone and Martins were barely tolerated. I liked the Champion Hot Rod, but would have to put an Evinrude cover on it to get it in our garage. We had our own Evinrude experimental engineering department in our garage at Houghton Lake - I raced in Class "A" at the Houghton Lake Boat Club from 1946 through 1952 and was "A" class high points champ during that time.