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In order to view this proof accurately, the Overprint Preview Option must be checked in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your Customer Service Representative if you have questions about ἀnding the option. Job Name: -- /330792t (x. THE BACKYARD AT 58 BAGLEY It is always too soon to quit. -HENRY FORD ) Henry came home from the Fair-he must have seen the Ferris wheel there, first of its kind-and bicycled to and fro. And Clara-we know little of Clara in all those months of 1893, nor of that vanished home on Forest Avenue; in all their reminiscing they never talked about that time, perhaps because no one thought to ask. One day in 1892 Dr. David H. O'Donnell, a young doctor fresh from medical school, met Harry Bryant, Clara's brother, in a Detroit cigar store. That night his wife had a baby safely and thereafter recommended Dr. O'Donnell. On November 6, 1893, in the Forest Avenue house, Edsel Bryant Ford was born. Dr. O'Donnell didn't have enough money for a horse and buggy; he came on a bicycle, with his doctor's bag tied on in front. Dr. O'Donnell said: "I didn't run into any difficulty . Mrs. Ford didn't give me any trouble at all. She never complained. Mr. Ford was in the house. He didn't get excited and he didn't bother me. Most young fathers bother the life out of a doctor. For the delivery of Edsel I got $10, and the nurse who was there twenty-four hours a day for two weeks got $4 a week." And from the early days of the Ford Motor Company until Henry Ford died, Dr. O'Donnell's cars were serviced free by the company. Ten days after Edsel was born Henry's salary was jumped almost double, to $90 a month. Two weeks later, on December 1, Henry became chief engineer. Two weeks and one day after that, on December 15, the Fords moved to 58 Bagley Avenue, around the corner from Grand River. On Christmas Eve, 1893, Henry got his tubular gas engine working, at Clara's kitchen sink. 74. A gasoline bill, 1893. The "Dr means "demi- ;ohn"; gasoline was then often sold in small ;ugs. By now Henry had wangled things pretty much to his liking. As chief engineer he had the confidence of the Edison management. The new job meant he was on call around the clock, and to Henry a 24-hour day was always the most satisfactory. He had no taste for clock-punching regularity, then or ever, and, unlike most of us, was somehow able at a relatively early age to arrange his affairs so he could always duck doing anything he disliked. In later years the long procession of his secretaries quickly learned that the one safe course was to answer all correspondence with "Mr. Ford is out of town." (There are miles of such letters in the Archives.) This became a great joke within the company; to this day, whenever anything irksome comes up, men will look at each other and chant in unison: "The Ford Motor Company is out of town." Henry kept his bicycle by the front steps of 58 Bagley Avenue day and night, installed a telephone -with an extension, naturally, to the workshop out in back-and every night, on retiring, placed his carefully unlaced high-top shoes beside his bed, so he could respond to emergencies like a fireman. He was now freed-for life, as it turned outfrom the compulsion to show up at any particular place at any particular time. He took advantage of this in a way peculiar to himself. No poolrooms saw him, no saloons got his business, and neither did the churches or any form of society or club: Henry went around to Detroit's machine shops like a scholarly browser in the bookstores of New York's lower Fourth Avenue, learning, meeting mechanics, and just pleasuring himself. These machine shops were his libraries, his clubs, his stock exchange, his laboratories, his jam-sessions . And here he met, sifting them through trial and error, many of the men who would be important in his career. At the Wain Machine Shop, on Wayne Street, he picked up again with his boyhood playmate at Flower Brothers-Frederick Strauss. Said Strauss: Henry had all kinds of time and he used to come see me. He had a little shop of his...

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