Book Review - Ford the Men & The Machine by Robert Lacey

This book holds a great place for me. This is the first scholarly Ford book I ever read. At the tender age of 8 no less. I got made fun of at school for reading it instead of comic books, but I didn't care, Ford books rule over any other kind of book.

With any book there are negatives & positives. Negatives such as the rather rushed last couple chapters, the rather obvious author's stance on politics & unions- his views show in the writing on chapters dealing with Labor Relations, The Peace Ship, and Presidents Roosevelt & Coolidge.

The positives include presenting new information, an easy to read format suited to the general public and Ford Scholar alike, and a few never before published photographs.

This book was the basis for the bloody awful(at least from a Ford Historian perspective) made for TV movie that starred Cliff Robertson as Henry Ford. We will cover that in the next post.

All in all, this is a good addition to your Ford books shelf if you don't have it already and you can pickup a used hardback copy for under $5.

Henry Ford - Practical Joker

What's so funny about this picture?

Henry Ford had a great sense of humor and for the most part this has been well documented over the years. From his early working career-
He would blow sulfur fumes into a closed room through a broken out knothole.
He nailed down a slovenly worker's shoes to the floor as a lesson to take more care in picking up after himself
He hot wired the urinals so one would get a rather nasty jolt upon using said urinal.

As the years progressed his humor remained unchanged. One yarn tells the story where Henry Ford was showing a student around Greenfield Village, then under construction. As they drive around the complex in Ford's Model T Coupe, the back wheels started spinning on ice. Henry gives the old T some gas, the heat from the spinning tire melts the ice and splashes mud all over a nearby wall. Ford looking over at this tells his passenger, "That's OK. It'll give the guys something to do tomorrow." And then proceeds to do it a few more times at various places in the village.

A long time executive shows up at the office one day with a covered bird cage containing a bird for the employee to give his wife for an anniversary present. Henry Ford being a bird lover was naturally interested in this and he goes to the man's office to check it out for himself. Upon seeing the songbird in the cage, Ford tells his employee "I just got in a fine new stock of herringbone. Go over and have my tailor make you up a suit, you need an anniversary suit." (Ford gave away suits the same way Rockefeller passed out dimes) He did as obeyed and when he was gone Ford went out and caught a black crow and switched out birds in the cage.

On a trip to New York in 1908, Henry Ford conspired with the maids to shortsheet James Couzens' bed at the hotel.

These are just a small fraction of the jokes Henry Ford liked to pull and from time to time we will revisit the topic and post a few more!

PS- The joke is on the camera man. Henry Ford was left handed........

Announcing A New Site.

As I've been in the process of digitizing my photo archives of past car shows, I thought I'd create a new site and post some photos there for everyone's enjoyment. Naturally the emphasis is on Ford products, but there will be a wide variety of cars featured. My archives spans from 1970 to present day. with over 80,000 photos in my collection there's something for everyone!

As of today I only have a few sets of photos up, but I will be adding more sets today & this evening. Also look for a large update to Vintage Ford Facts this evening as well!

The new site for car show photos is Car Show Photos.  or  www.carshowphotos.blogspot.com