John Flanagan Buggy Company, Greenville, North Carolina

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" height=90 BGCOLOR="#003366" TEXT="#F7F7FF" bgproperties="fixed" background="008005a0dkcfqa.png"> <div> <A HREF="http://willysdealershipproject.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://willysdealershipproject.com"><U><B>home</B></U></A><B>     | </B><B> </B><B> </B><B>  </B><FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#FFCC66" FACE="Arial" ><B>Willys Dealership Project</B></FONT></div> <div> <B>             Back to: </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="North Carolina"><U><B>North Carolina</B></U></A><B> </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Use your browser's Back button for best results</B></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> Flanagan Buggy Company</div> <div> Address Unknown</div> <div> Greenville, North Carolina</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> The John Flanagan Buggy Company was founded in 1866.  Read more about the early days of the company in the <A HREF="http://www.lib.ecu.edu/exhibits/tobacco/GVIL/hGVIL012.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.lib.ecu.edu/exhibits/tobacco/"><U>Digital History display at Eastern Carolina University.</U></A>  By the Post-WW2 years, as corporate fortunes changed, the company had transformed from a manufacturer into a much smaller car dealership.  A reference to this company during the late 1940's turned up in a compelling story by <A HREF="mailto:jgaskins@mvp.net" TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto:jgaskins@mvp.net"><U>Jake Gaskins</U></A>, published in the <A HREF="http://www.thesunmagazine.org/carcrazy.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.thesunmagazine.org/carcrazy.h"><U>August 2000 issue of Sun Magazine</U></A>.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> "My father died in 1985. In 1994, after my eighty-seven-year-old mother entered a retirement community, we put the family home on the market, and I paid a visit to the local moving company to discuss shipping most of the furniture to me in Missouri. I was talking with the secretary when the owner appeared in the doorway - a vigorous man in his sixties with a full head of short gray hair. He had known my father.</div> <div>  </div> <div> "Jake," he said, shaking my hand, "I still have the Jeep I bought from your father. It's in one of the warehouses in back. Do you want to see it?"</div> <div>  </div> <div> I knew that my father had once briefly sold cars for a dealership called Flanagan Buggy Company, if I'm not mistaken. I didn't know he had sold Jeeps. I followed the man outside into the bright sunlight, then through a side door into a warehouse. And there it was: a forties-vintage Jeep, red, in mint condition.</div> <div> "It still runs like a top," the man said. "I take it out once in a while."</div> <div>  </div> <div> The warehouse was hot and musty, the sunlight pouring through a dirty window like a flashlight beam through murky water. I walked over and reverently placed a hand on a fender, trying to imagine my father selling cars - this car - before I was born.</div> <div>  </div> <div> I thanked the man for showing it to me, feeling that my response was inadequate; wishing that my grief were still fresh, the pain sharper; wishing that I could summon tears."</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> This is strictly a guess on my part, but if the company sold cars for very long, "Buggy" may have been dropped from the company name at some point.  Correspondence with the author revealed the dealership also sold Fords and in the building's latter days, only a small corner of the original factory was standing.</div> <bR> <div> Many thanks to Jake Gaskins for allowing an excerpt of his work to be reproduced here.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>