This story published
online: Friday, July 15, 2005 7:01 AM CDT
Classics collect in Mount
Pulaski: Pierce-Arrow lovers 'Looking for Lincoln' as part of
annual gathering
By TONY REID - H&R Staff
Writer
Herald
& Review/Kelly J. Huff
Joanne Burmeister of Forrestville California
arrive in Mount Pulaski Thursday morning in a
1929 5 passenger Pierce-Arrows complete with her
Flapper outfit to make the trip more authentic.
MOUNT PULASKI - If Abraham Lincoln
had been born a bit later and lived long enough, the chances are
his automobile of choice would have been a Pierce-Arrow.
Abe's early 20th-century successors certainly loved them, with
William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover and Franklin
Delano Roosevelt among the chief executives who waved at their
fellow Americans from the sumptuous interiors of these
top-of-the-line land yachts.
But if Lincoln was too early for the 1901-'38 Pierce-Arrow
production run, it's never too late for Pierce-Arrow to go
looking for Lincoln. "And we do expect to see him, he's
going to be here," said Pierce-Arrow enthusiast Joanne
Burmeister, as she stood by a 1929 model outside the Mount
Pulaski Courthouse on Thursday and hoping for a glimpse of a
Lincoln impersonator.
"And this is so nice," she said, looking at the
courthouse where the circuit-riding lawyer practiced law from
1848 to 1853. "I want to see everything, it's
beautiful."
A lot of the crowd gathering outside the courthouse wanted to
see the amazing cars - dozens of them - and gaze at the
strikingly attired Burmeister, dressed like a 1920s flapper in
an ivory-cream number complete with matching headscarf. She and
husband Nathan were in town from their California home for the
Pierce-Arrow Society's Annual Meet, a club gathering featuring a
parts swap, auction and car show with prizes. The meet is being
hosted in Springfield this week with a tour of Honest Abe sites
thrown in under the Looking for Lincoln theme.
The prairie lawyer was known for attracting an audience for his
court cases in Mount Pulaski but it's doubtful his legal work
drew the kind of appreciative crowd that lined up to gaze at the
cars seeking him on Thursday. People snapped endless pictures,
shot video of engine and interior details and kept asking
Burmeister if she wouldn't mind standing a little closer to the
1929 sedan she'd arrived in.
"These are classic American
cars," she said. "And you feel very grand riding in
one. These cars were the American competition to Rolls-Royce,
and a lot of them were owned by people that you would
recognize."
Charlie Chaplin had one, as did John D. Rockefeller and the Shah
of Persia and Babe Ruth and silent move star Roscoe
"Fatty" Arbuckle and so on and so on. With rare models
now worth up to $400,000, this was a car that was never intended
as mass transit. John Gambs, a Pierce-Arrow enthusiast from
Lafayette, Ind., said new ones cost $5,000 at a time when you
might take home a brand new Model T home for $300 - but then
came the Great Depression, and the luxury trade hit the wall.
"The same thing happened to Pierce-Arrow that happened to
Peerless and Duesenberg and all the expensive, high-end
cars," said Gambs, 60. "There just wasn't a market for
them anymore; in their last year, 1938, they only made six of
them."
The Pierce-Arrow Society has about 1,200 members who own maybe
2,300 cars, and Gambs says ownership is no fun if you don't have
a good excuse to get out and drive.
"We like to look at new places when we have our annual
meet," he said. "We wanted to come to Illinois to see
the new Lincoln Museum and tour some of the Lincoln sites; it's
a lot of fun."
Mount Pulaski was having a good time, too, with those who
promote tourism pleased that the Abraham Lincoln Presidential
Library and Museum is doing what many had hoped it would -
drawing tourists into the whole Central Illinois area.
"We want to bring more visitors to town, and the museum is
working out well for us," said Jean Martin, a member of
Mount Pulaski's Looking for Lincoln Committee. Surrounded by
gleaming vehicles that made downtown appear like some exotic
Hollywood stage set, Martin wore a grin as wide as a
Pierce-Arrow bumper. "This is just great, I love it,"
she said. "We're just thrilled to death to have them
here."
Tony Reid can be reached at treid@;herald-review.com or
421-7977.
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