Henry Ford’s Own Story

It was a hot, sultry day in the last of July, one of those Eastern summer days when the air presses heavily down on the stifling country fields, and in every farmyard the chickens scratch deep on the shady side of buildings, looking for cool earth to lie upon, panting.

“This weather won’t hold long,” William Ford said that morning, giving the big bay a friendly slap and fastening the trace as she stepped over. “We’d better get the hay under cover before night.”

There was no sign of a cloud in the bright, hot sky, but none of the hired men disputed him. William Ford was a good farmer, thrifty and weather-wise. Every field of his 300-acre farm was well cared for, yielding richly every year; his cattle were fat and sleek, his big red barns the best filled in the neighborhood. He was not the man to let ten acres of good timothy-and-clover hay get caught in a summer shower and spoil.

They put the big hay-rack on the wagon, threw in the stone water jugs, filled with cool water from the well near the kitchen door, and drove out to the meadow. One imagines them working there, lifting great forksful of the clover-scented hay, tossing them into the rack, where, on the rising mound, the youngest man was kept busy shifting and settling them with his fork.

Mother and father and the four children set out for church as usual. At the hitching posts, where William Ford tied the horses before going in to the church, they met their neighbors, the Bennetts. Will Bennett, a youngster about Henry’s age, hailed him from the other carriage.

“Hi, Hen! C’m’ere! I got something you ain’t got!”

Henry scrambled out over the wheel and hurried to see what it might be. It was a watch, a real watch, as large and shiny as his father’s. Henry looked at it with awed admiration, and then with envy. It was Will’s own watch; his grandfather had given it to him.

On a strict, cross-your-heart promise to give it back, Henry was allowed to take it in his hands. Then he cheered up somewhat.

“That ain’t much!” he scornfully remarked. “It ain’t runnin’!” At the same moment a dazzling idea occurred to him. He had always wanted to see the insides of a watch.

“I bet I c’n fix it for you,” he declared.

A few minutes later, when Mary Ford looked for Henry, he was nowhere to be found. Will was also missing. When, after services, they had not appeared, the parents became worried. They searched. Inquiries and explorations failed to reveal the boys.

They were in the Bennetts’ farm “shop,” busy with the watch. Having no screw-driver small enough, Henry made one by filing a shingle nail. Then he set to work and took out every screw in the mechanism.

From the kitchen window she saw him sitting idly on the horse-block in the middle of the forenoon, twisting a straw in his fingers and frowning intently at the side of the barn.

Sometimes after supper, instead of settling quietly down with his papers, he walked up and down, up and down, the sitting-room, with his hands behind his back and that same frown on his forehead. At last she could endure it no longer. She begged him to tell her the worst.

He replied, surprised, that it was a steam engine—he couldn’t figure out the ratio of power to weight satisfactorily. The blame thing bothered him.

“Oh, is that all?” Mrs. Ford said indignantly. “Well, I wouldn’t bother about it if I were you. What does an old steam engine matter, anyhow? Come and sit down and forget about it.”

It was the one thing Ford could not do. His mind, once started on the project of building an engine to use on the farm, remained obstinately at work on the details. He spent weeks considering them one by one, thinking out adaptations, new devices, in an effort to overcome the difficulty.