An Ohio Town Adopts a Car.(Escape Roads)

Byline: BILL McGUIRE

Here's something you don't see every day: a car in a public library. And not in a lobby or gallery, either. Parked in front of the checkout desk at the Harris-Elmore Public Library in Elmore, Ohio, is a 1904 Elmore Runabout. With practiced steps, students rushing to use the computers carefully maneuver around it.

The car is not only the centerpiece of the local library; since taking up permanent residence there nearly 30 years ago, the little blue roadster has become the unofficial town mascot of Elmore, Ohio. Donated by enthusiast Pete Willet, who bought it at auction from The Henry Ford Museum, the Elmore is depicted on village welcome signs. All this affection despite one minor historical inconsistency: The Elmore automobile was not built in Elmore but rather in Clyde, Ohio (setting for the 1919 classic work of fiction, Winesburg, Ohio), 20 miles to the southeast.

The carmaker did indeed get its start in Elmore, where in 1869 Harmon von Vecton Becker erected a sawmill and barrel stave factory on the banks of the Portage River. In January 1893 the Elmore Manufacturing Co. began making bicycles in volume, at which point the town fathers of nearby Clyde lured Becker away to an abandoned pump organ factory there. By 1900 Becker's two sons, James and Burton "Bert'' Becker, were tinkering with cars, soon putting their unique design into production. At its height, the Amanda Street factory in Clyde employed 200 workers and built 1000 cars per year.

The Beckers avoided one major source of trouble in early automobiles-parts failure-by simply eliminating most of them. The Elmore two-stroke contains only three internal components: piston, connecting rod and crankshaft. Though Elmore would go on to use more complex two-stroke schemes, all its early models relied on the same three-port, crankcase-compression system found in chain saws and dirt bikes today. The design was not terribly advanced ("With a power stroke every rotation, the two-stroke engine can easily achieve ...