Crazy Henry

            "Honk, Honk," "Screech," "Drive slow-poke," "Slow down crazy driver." These are some of the sounds that are heard and the phrases that people often yell while driving on the roads and highways these days. There are more than 117 million automobiles, 31 million trucks, 5 million motorcycles, and 500,000 buses that are traveling on the roads and interstates on average each day (Altschiller 21). In large part we can thank Henry Ford for this development in our present day society. As a farm boy he knew from first-hand experience that farming could be backbreaking work, and he knew that machinery could ease the burden. He saw the automobile as a piece of machinery (Sorensen 17). He envisioned the car, not as a luxury vehicle for the rich, but as a means for the average man to make his life -and his family's easier and happier. It soon became apparent that the car would not only ease man's burden, but that it would also enable him to enjoy a fuller life (Sorensen 17). .
             Henry Ford was born on July 30, 1863 on a forty-acre farm in Dearborn, Michigan. His parents were William and Mary Ford who were Irish immigrants shipped to America as refugees following the Irish potato famine in Southern Ireland. They came to America in the 1840's looking to farm. Henry helped on the farm in summer and in winter attended a one-room school. The two things that .
             fascinated the boy at a young age were watches and clocks. He went about the countryside doing repair work without pay, merely for the chance to tinker with machinery (Compton's 305). Even at a very young age, he was a mechanical genius. At the age of 12 his mother died. He never forgot the grief and shock of his mother's death and went through life a loner. At 16, he left home to become an apprentice in the machine shop of the Drydock Engine Works in Detroit, which went against his father's wishes (Lacey 16). Henry worked for $2.50 a week as a mechanic.