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Popular Science Monthly - July 1955  p202

The Life and Times of Gus Wilson

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(continued from page 88)

stating that both Gus and Joe were real men, running a garage in a small town near New York City.  Their names were changed, it was reported, as a condition of detailing their experiences.  In one of their articles, appearing in 1930. Gus's prepublication history was pushed even farther back:

"Gus Wilson grew up with the automobile industry. When Duryea was experimenting with his first gasoline buggy, Gus Wilson was then a young man, was investigating and incidentally overhauling one of those funny little steam vehicles that had to stop at every horse trough. ...When the first electric hansom cab hummed and groaned its snail like course over the streets, Gus was adding water to the batteries, sandpapering the commutator and otherwise mothering these clumsy vehicles.  His wrist is still stiff because the huge one-cylinder engine of a Northern runabout kicked back and broke several bones..."

Based on the Duryea clue, simple arithmetic would make the old boy around 82 years old now.  Since this is clearly improbable, research has been conducted into dusty files and elderly memories.  The answer: there was indeed a prototype Gus long ago. For those who ask about him now, the only fitting reply is, "What do you want, chimes?"

old friends. Around the garage, from the Thirties on, there gathered a few regulars once described by Martin Bunn as the "Model Garage Debating Society."  There was Doc Marvin, general practitioner and boon companion; Ezra Zacharias, the rural mail carrier; Silas Barnstable, a magnificent tightwad; and old Doc Hockenjoss, a fragrant and whimsical veterinarian.  State Trooper Jerry Corcoran showed up in 1939 and aided by Gus's frequent help in nabbing malefactors won his sergeant's stripes in 1950.  Harry Godfrey was grease monkey for some years, but he enlisted a few months before Pearl, just as Gus had brought...(continued on page 204)

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