What it was about I don’t know. Probably it had to do with the politics of conservatism, on which my grandfather was about as expert as a small town retired tailor can be. What I remember is his telling me, many years later, that he had ended his letter to Ford by saying “You are a busy man and I don’t expect an acknowledgment of this letter."’ A week later (nails were so much faster then) my grandfather teceived a letter from Dearborn, signed with the name that was then appearing on Model A radiators all over this continent. “No man should ever be too busy to answer a thoughtful let- ter,’” Henry Ford’s answer began. He then dealt with the substance of my grandfather’s letter, whatever that might have been. Ever since hearing Grandad's story, Henry Ford has been one of the people travelling with me across the decades, even when I wasn't driving one of his cars. In later years I learned that he had made himself foolish sailing a so-called Peace Ship to Europe during the First World War, that he was obsessed with the idea of a great Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, that he treated his son Edsel shamefully and had numerous other character defects. But to me he has always been a person and not a symbolic or mythic figure. Funny, how one’s thoughts of this world take shape. But what has Henry Ford gat to wv . Quantities Limited Sale Ends February 28/91 ° GST & PST not included 7 ** Monthly Payment bused on a 25" diarn payment Prone Nd do with today, here, in Nogales on the Mexican border? Nogales is an American town, but barely. The language of banks, stores and streets is Spanish. It has the clustered, clut- tered, careless and friendly feel of Old Mexico, on the other side of town. The reason to remember Henry Ford this day is that he was the man who put us on wheels and by doing so changed the path of his- tory. Mr. Ford was not the inventor of the automobile. That happened in France. He was not even the first man to use endless belts for manufac- ture by the system we call produc- tion line. That, too, was a Euro- pean development. What Henry Ford did was to use the preduction line to put a car in the garage of almost every American and Canadian. Later, other imitators of his system did so in Europe and are now doing so, belatedly, in Asia and Latin America. His genius was in ignoring the small, wealthy upper class, the people who later bought his Lin- colns. His cars were the Model T Paul St. Pierre and the Model A, the everyman car. He wanted a smail profit from multitudes, not a huge profit from a few, a fundamental dif- ference between the traditional English and European approach and the American way. Because Mr. Ford’s system triumphed, geographic isolation ended for most parts of Canada and the United States in this cen- tury. True, as I have the misfortune to know, as late as the 1940s there were people in small communities PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES in the Maritimes who boasted they had never travelled more than 20 miles from where they were born and that’s how they damn well knew that other places weren’t worth a visit. But on most of this continent, most people know that they could go where they wanted, when they wanted, in their persona! carriage. They had a form of wealth and privilege unknown to almost all the other generations of piebian mankind. Again, what does it all have to do with Nogales, Arizona, in the year 1991? Just this. Thanks to Mr. Ford and all the others who adopted his system of producing cars for the masses instead of the aristocracy, my family and | can travel in comfort for 1,400 kilometres across two states of Mexico in one day. If sunset could last just a bit ionger in the tropics, the whole trip could have been made in daylight hours. Almost the entire trip is done on cruise control on four-lane highway in a cool car with a tape recorder playing. We travel from tropical mangrove swamp, over little mountains, through cities old and young and over the glowing deserts. When Cortez was alive, Friday, February 8, 1981 — North Shore News - @ Travelling with Henry Ford’s ghost American industrialist taught ordinary people to disregard distance NOGALES, ARIZONA — About 1931 my grandfather, who had neither money, position, nor fame, wrote a letter to Henry Ford, who had all three. the trip took a year or more and there was no music playing. Our cost for gas was $46.89 (Cdn). This is far less than air fares for three people across such distance, even less than one would pay for three people to make the trip by bus or train. There are other costs. Tire wear, oil, depreciation of the vehicle and insurance are only a few of them. Indeed, they don’t bear thinking about, unless you are an accountant and enjoy that sort of thing. But, then, there are hidden costs in bus and train travel that we prefer not to be reminded about. These include monstrous subsidies that we pay whether we ride or not. None of these things . are to the point. The point is that a continent fuil of quite ordinary people were taught to disregard distance and consider themselves the neighbors of every man who lived beside any road. And here, at this moment, we know that our own, personal flying carpet will carry us home to B.C. in two or three days, unless we should detour through Texas. The global village, first perceiv- ed by Grandad’s old pen pal, whom he never met nor wrote to again. ing about it and doit ! Orchid Travel has a wealth of information on many cruises for 1991, with some offered at almost 50% off brochure prices. Join us February 13th and find out why cruising is the hottest vacation value today. Phone for details ! 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