Henry Ford's Own Story

Ford's childhood occurred on a Sunda

for the elders. In the morning the fat driving horses, brushed till their glossy coats shone in the sun, were hitched to the two-seated carriage, and the family dro

arments, sternly forbidden to "fidget," while outside were all the sights and sounds of a country spring m

use in spending a great deal of time learning about heaven and hell. In my opinion, a man m

a country boy's ardor for "going barefoot." To cramp his joyously liberated toes again into stuffy, leather shoes seemed to him an outrage. He resented his white collar, too, and the im

where William Ford tied the horses before going in to the church, they met their neighbors,

e! I got somethi

, a real watch, as large and shiny as his father's. Henry looked at it with awed admir

ive it back, Henry was allowed to take it

nnin'!" At the same moment a dazzling idea occurred to

ix it for you,

Will was also missing. When, after services, they had not appeared, the parents be

no screw-driver small enough, Henry made one by filing a shingle n

protest from Will; the cogs fell apart, the springs unwound. Altog

l, torn between natural emotion over the disast

t together," he reminded that experime

ay dinner, grew more than restless, but Henry held him there by the sheer force of his enthusias

eck, his hands and face were grimy, but he had correctly replaced most of the screws, and he passi

. What he does remember vividly is the passion for investigating clocks and watches that followed. In a few

But the knowledge he acquired was more than useful to him later, when

s at night, kept the kitchen wood-box filled, helped to hitch and unhitch the horses, learned to milk and chop kindling. He recalls that his principal objection to such work was that it was always interrupt

it. He did not care for school especially, although he got fair marks in his studies, and was given to helping o

eate unnecessary friction in his human relations, finding it as wasteful of energy there as it would have been in any of the mechanic

ancestry there had been developed a strong desire to have something to show for time spent. Swimming, skating and the like were all very well until he had thoroughly learned

bottle and bit of broken glass they could find and recast them into strange shapes. It was Henry, too, who devised the plan of damming the creek that ran near the schoolhouse, and by organizing the

meant, some day, to be a locomotive engineer. When he saw the big, black engines roaring across the Michigan farm lands, under their

ratched his bare legs on blackberry briars. He learned how to drive horses, how to handle a hay fork or a hoe, how to sharpen and repair the farm tools. The "shop" was th

rred which undoubtedly changed the