Lately, I have spent days sorting and organizing my parents possessions, a collection comprised of years of calendars, newspapers and magazines that tell a story about their lives. In among decades of every greeting card ever received, I pulled out this article from 1985 about Dad’s marine engine business “Rier Marine.” I broke out laughing when I read how he managed to buy a large inventory of engines at low cost. I remembered the stories told at home. Dad bought a train load of Buick engines to marinize for the boats of fishermen and lobstermen.
And 1964 is when Gene’s big break came – the opportunity to buy a large inventory of engines at a reasonable price. The government was after certain specifications in marine engines. Buick had 500 engines for Grumman Allied Industries to put in their Pearson Yachts. The eight engines the government had been given all blew up.
Rier, by this time, had years of experience marinizing Buick engines. He also had a reputation for mechanical wizardry, which was backed up by credentials earned with the US Air Force during World War II. “Well Buick wanted me to check this out [why the engines blew up]. The chief engineer on the project asked me what college I’d graduated from. After I told him Lubec High School, he wasn’t interested in finding out what happened. So I ended up buying the whole mess for very little.”
Dad knew he could marinize the engines, prevent them from blowing up, and make them extraordinarily reliable. He could fix anything, but he was a genius with engines. The chief Buick engineer couldn’t repair the engines and didn’t believe anyone else could, especially a hick from Machias, Maine, who had only graduated from Lubec High School and had no college education. Dad bought 500 Buick engines for a song. The article continues:
Related posts:
The Beginning of A Business in Machias Maine. Rier Buick. 1949.
Voices of Ancestors 