| Coker has always loved anything mechanical BEN BENTON / Staff Writer It shows in his eyes when he turns a key, flips a switch or rolls it out for a shine. Athens businessman Bill Coker Sr. loves anything mechanical, whether it's the steel-forming presses at his business, Coker Millwrights, or a 1962 Cushman Eagle motorcycle. Never heard of one? A visit to Coker's business or home would have most anyone scratching their heads and speculating about the last time they saw such examples of arcane mechanical gadgetry. If it's old and has some form of mechanical movement, Coker probably has one, knows how to get one or knows someone who had one way back when. His love of things mechanical began early in life. Coker said he's enjoyed tinkering all his life." When I was 9 years old, I paid $315 for a Whizzer (a motorized bicycle) with money I earned carrying The Daily Post-Athenian," Coker recalled. " I'd bugged (then DPA General Manager) Neal Ensminger into hiring me. I was the youngest they'd had." Coker said he'd secured the paper route on Madison, Eastanallee and Central avenues; then an area of new residential developments. The DPA was holding a contest for newspaper carriers at the time and the young Coker - with a Whizzer as his mode of locomotion - had his eye on the prize, a Cocker Spaniel puppy. Another choice was a radio, but Coker said his sights were set on the live prize. Coker managed to increase the circulation of the newspaper on his route from 89 customers to 150, snatching the top spot from the other carriers. The victory was bittersweet, however. "
I won the dog but he died about three weeks later," he said. "I
was devastated and my brother said I should've taken the radio." At
the time, The DPA was located on Jackson Street, just a block off the
Courthouse Square, and not far from the Sears & Roebuck, said Coker.
The Sears store had something new, something no one had seen.
Of course, it was mechanical, and, as a bonus, it could help him
earn
money.
Coker said there were offices for the Tennessee Valley Authority and
one
of the employee's families there purchased Athens' first rotary
mower. Coker said the hitch was the first mechanical modification he'd made and his appetite for contraptions was whetted, especially if it was of no use to anyone else." I always figured if it ran one time, I could made it run again," he said. That first Whizzer hasn't stayed with him, but Coker said its home was his for a while." I kept that Whizzer until 1952 and I traded it to Roy and J.C. Key for a 1936 Indian motorcycle," he said. "I was always unhappy that I traded." On a golf cart tour of Coker's business on North Jackson Street, Coker points to some newly-manufactured frame parts for an antique car a customer is restoring. The frame parts - as well as a couple of tons worth of other metal artifacts setting around the business's property - represent the marriage of Coker's love of machines and the desire to eat. Established in 1973, Coker's Millwrights provides steel fabrication,
retails steel and sells used equipment. Other services include
crane,
welding, fork truck, millwright, industrial waste hauling and
trucking
services.
A big part of Coker's business, now, is rigging and moving the
heaviest
items for industrial customers.
Bumping along in the golf cart, Coker gives a brief description and
weight-hauling capacities of numerous lifts and cranes lining the
parking lot around the millwright shop.
Coker has machines that will lift items weighing anything from 75
pounds
to 75 tons. Coker said he and his brother restored an antique car in what was to become a harbinger of the business to come." My brother and I restored a Ford Model A Roadster," he said. "In 1954, that was almost unheard of." He said he enjoyed bringing back to life something that had been cast aside." I've been restoring cars ever since," Coker said. He said he doesn't believe anything mechanical is beyond hope. Coker's collection at home is more a museum than a simple collection. Coker lives off of Highway 39 with his wife, Kay, and his father. Another mechanical-contraption-ride (a second golf cart) to a barn behind his house reveals a collection of farm tractors in various states of restoration. Tractors bearing the brand names John Deere, Ford, and even a Canadian-made Cockshutt, are parked around the inside of the barn where antique wheels and parts hang overhead. As the golf cart glides to a stop at the barn, Coker's dad, H.C." Pop"Coker, 97 years old and still going strong, is on his hands and knees groping around under a Ford Model A for a dropped 5/8-inch wrench. The elder Coker stops long enough to say hello and returns to his tinkerings." My father always told me, 'If you do it right the first time, you won't have to do it over,'" Coker said as though repeating a mantra heard many times. "And that's the way we run our business." From that first Whizzer,
to the dozen Whizzers in different states
of
repair or restoration, Coker has enough in one room to seemingly
keep a
man busy for years.
Among his collection are a 1957 Chevrolet BelAire, a 1931 Ford Model
A,
a 1953 Cadillac Convertible, a 1965 Mustang motorcycle and a 1962
Cushman motorcycle.
The Cushman, a smallish-looking five-horsepower, single-cylinder,
two-speed motorcycle, is the only vehicle easily rolled from its
parking
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