The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1937-11-18
The Porch Sitters
At the II

a gangling youth | often sat on the porch
II summer night listening to the Oldsters
talk. If it were the habit of youth to heed
might have felt pretty blue many an eve
ming. For it was the general belief made
articulate that there was no longer any op-
jortuniry in this country.
'All the free land has been taken up
the graybeards said to each other. "Wal
Street owns the nation, just like William
Jennings Bryan says, and there is no long
e. any chance for young fellow to get
foothold."
Then l became cub reporter and one
of my jobs was to fill in on night police. Ed
die Guest, Art Gordon, Charlie Nichols, Jan
Schmedding and lot of others among us
used to eat once in awhile at the Night Owl
lunch wagon on the Michigan Avenue side
of the city hall. Sometimes there came
man we thought very old; must have been
about 40. He had overalls on and they said
IL worked over at the Edison. His name
was Henry Ford.
He was the night engineer and the
highest pay he ever got was six dollars
week less than he now pays fioor-sweepers
at his Dearborn shops.
-,boutt that time there was another fell
low, living in an East Side tenement house
district in New York. He too sat on the
steps OF summer evening. But he wasn't
there to hear oldsters explain there was no
longer any future. He sat there because
he wanted to learn the American language
having but recently come over from Den
mark.
His name was Bill Knudsen and now
ne is president of the General Motors Corp,
directing the destinies of 100000 men all
over the world
And, just about that time, too there
he
CT oss-roads town of Ellis, Kansas. His
father was an engineer of the Santa Fe and
from the day he was born, almost, he had
to work for living. Out in that frontier
prairie town if anybody had got up on a
soapbox and told the boys that they could
only work 40 hours a week, that the less
they did the more prosperous they would be
and the less food they grew the more there
would be to eat, they would have gently but
nrmly taken him over to the doctors to
have his head examined And the doctor
would no doubt have had him put away some
place where he could do himself no HARM
Most of us in Detroit know the saga of
Ford and Knudsen, but until now we have
not had all the amazing story of Walter
Chrysler. 1t is being told, by himself, in
weekly lnstallments in the Saturday Eve
nlng Post. l have seldom read more fas-
clnating autobiography. Though written
N collaboration with Boyden Sparks" it is
Walter Chrysler speaking. One who knows
him can almost recognize the sound of his
voice through the printed page.
Walter Chrysler did not start out as a
ooy with ambition to be one of the great
motor car manufacturers of the world. His
only hope then was to be the best mechanic
IN the railroad shops at Ellis-and to play
the tuba in the shop band; that, of course
than to
neighbor girl who is now his wife.
The few dollars he could spare he used
to educate himself through a correspond
ence course. He so loved machinery that it
was never work for him and he was never
so happy as when he was covered with the
oil and grease of his trade.
No doubt on the village porches of Ellis
the old graybea-ds were shaking their
heads, too, and saying that there was no
longer any future in this country. But he
was too busy studying and playing on the
tuba to listen to them.
hope when the story of Walter Chry-
sler has been finished in the Post that it is
put out in book form for every young man
and woman in America to read. No mes
sage is more needed for our times 1t is
not goody-goody book. 1t is a robustious
tale of a red-blooded man with laughter in
ais heart and the joy of adventure coursing
through his veins. 1t is obvious that Wal
ter Chrysler today is prouder of the fact
that he was the best man at fixing railroad
engine valves in the Southwest than he is
OF his triumphs in the motor car world.
l challenge anybody with a heart to
read his story of the cracked cylinder head,
when he was mechanic in the shops at
Salt Lake City, without lump coming into
his throat. It was a Mormon excursion and
the train had to get out on time to save the
roads reputation. The back cyclinder head
on No. 46. Chrysler was called -.
Two helpers to the coal chute where
the crippled engine would pause first
operating only on one side as she rolled in
=. before she stopped was working on her,
stripping off nuts and crossroads as walk
ed beside her. scorched shins ;. never
stopped. Two hours and 40 minutes after:
Take her away she's ready
"Old man Hickey watched her go his
watch in his hand. think he had been pray
ing to that watch all the time worked But
when she passed from sight, he came to
where l stood wiping my face with a piece
of waste ;"
No longer any romance to life hev No