GROSSE ILE, MICHIGAN TO ELKHART, INDIANA

Moving west and a bit south, we struck out for Elkhart, Indiana, home of the RV Museum/Hall of Fame and a meeting with my Yooper friends, Pat and Richard Whitfield. They will tour the museum and explore a bit of the local area with us in their recreation vehicle.
If you are familiar with my blog, you may remember the Whitfields from Sept. 2009 blogs, when long lost friends came to visit in Murphys and went home with gold from gold country.

Looking back at our recent visit to the Ford Museum, they had a section on home furnishings and I collected several pictures of interesting chairs from long ago, like the  molded chair above. It  became popular in the early 1960's and was nearly indestructible. Called a modular chair, it was made of fiberglass. We used them in the kitchen and patio and they were reasonably comfortable. In the museum, this chair was displayed  along with its huge mold.

Soft and prettier than the molded chair, I always dreamed of having something this modern and sleek in my future house. I've seen several variations on this chair over the years and it no longer holds any appeal for me. Now, I'm only interested in pictures of them. The pictures are more fun, affordable and don't take up much room.

 This molded chair was actually flexible. You could lean back in it and the back support would move slightly. Again, it was used in the kitchen. They were convenient, lightweight and sturdy like those cookie cutter plastic lawn chairs we see everywhere today.

This little beauty, I'd like to own. Its sleek,strong;  its a work of art, and small enough to put in a corner somewhere.

Or, how about a corner chair like this one? Its an oldie and friends of my parents owned one of these. I found it uncomfortable.

 In fact, most old time chairs were uncomfortable to sit in, including the fancy sofas and lounge chairs of the rich. Nothing matches the comfort of today's furnishings with its foam cushioning, in my opinion.

 This one doesn't look comfortable and was probably meant to impress other hunters with its design.
I have an endless fascination with chairs so, needless to say, I enjoyed the chair collection at Henry Ford's Museum. While I enjoyed the chairs, a fellow viewing the old farm equipment was nostalgically reminiscing over various hard working farm machines. I could only shake my head. To each his own.
On our way to Elkhart, we stopped, did some shopping, and rested at this lovely little roadside park.

 Looking forward to the RV Museum and Hall of Fame.

THE ROUGE FORD FACTORY TOUR

We toured the Rouge Ford Complex yesterday, which at one time was the biggest,  most competitive, efficient, successful, industrial complex in the world. Henry Ford's innovation was a beacon to other industries and this plant was the stellar example with 100,000 employees in 1934. An amazing place then, and an amazing place, now.

Henry Ford worked for Thomas Edison for eight years before quiting him in 1889. As we know, Edison was a big thinker and innovator who inspired others. They remained lifelong friends. Ford tinkered with his Tin Lizzie and was ready to open shop. The first Ford Automobile Company failed. He tried again and failed again. In 1903, he finally got The Ford Motor Company off the ground. Famous for his assembly line technique, he learned from watching others, how a butcher would hang his beef and wheel it around to make cuts on it. How a clock maker would make two gears for a precision clock to have a spare gear for repair when it wore out. How cotton mills passed bags of fibers from one worker to the other at a mill.
He built and sold cars but he wanted them to be affordable for everyone, rather than the automobile becoming a plaything for the rich. At that time, it took 12 hours to build a car.  He disliked having to depend on some company that was behind on his parts, or couldn't deliver product while he had men waiting. He wanted to control the building of his cars from start to finish-his way.
 He bought 2000 acres of cheap marshland and had his Rouge Plant built right on the Rouge River where raw materials could be delivered by barge.  It was the first plant to make a car from raw materials to finish all in the same plant.
Eventually he got the building of a car down from 12 hours to 93 minutes with his famous innovations in the assembly line and by continually looking for new ways to cut costs.

 For instance, he posed to his engineers that he would like to have an engine made from a single block of metal. He was told it would be impossible. His reply, you can find a job elsewhere, I want somebody who will do it. And, they did. Other manufacturers where aghast in 1914, when he doubled wages; 10,000 people came to the plant looking for work. He wanted the men he had working for him to be able to afford his cars.

As a result, in 1927 when he came out with the Model A, huge crowds came out to see it at dealerships all over the country. Everyone wanted to drive a car.

Portions of the old Rouge Plant are visible above. Portions have been rebuilt and refurbished over the years. Rouge was the factory of the future and made Ford rich and helped build America as an industrial giant.

 The new Rouge Assembly Plant, with its  robotic assembly line, would surely make its founder proud today. Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed inside. Even the outside of this new building is the plant of the future. Vines help cool the building. The roof is a "green"; planted with an inch of sedum which requires no watering. It survives on rain water and needs no mowing. It gets fertilizer once a year. It cut down the amount of rainwater runoff by 60 percent and saved 45 million dollars in water treatment costs. It reduces by 10 percent the amount of air conditioning needed in summer and heat needed in winter. Plus sky lights have cut the cost of lighting.

 This bank of solar panels also reduces cost of electricity, but it is the inside of the plant, the assembly process, that blows the mind. It is fascinating to watch the workers put together pick-up trucks so efficiently you can hardly believe the sheer genius of this robotic assembly line. Every move a worker makes has to be comfortable. No carpal tunnel here. Every arm twist and wrist movement, any difficult movement is done by the assistance of robotic arms that swivel at multiple joints with the body and turn like toys in your hand.  All heavy parts are moved by a robotic lifter and simply guided into place. Most of the finish pieces, liners, locks, head lights, panels, etc. are snap on, then screwed in place, making assembly easy.  If a worker is short, the car body lowers to his height at his station on inflatable "skillets".  Its clean, color coded, bar coded truly the plant of the future. We gawked for three hours. I only wish we could have taken pictures of this huge network of bright yellow machinery, called Free On Move Systems that fill the whole building in a ballet of efficient synchronization over three floors.
Jim's friend, Art Lambart, worked at Ford for 25 years after he left the nuclear plant business. He and Sue attended with us and we gave it 8 thumbs up. Don't miss this tour.

THE HENRY FORD MUSEUM, DEARBORN, MICHIGAN

Henry Ford was like many of us, he liked to collect "things". When titans of industry collect it touches every walk of life: invention, history, work, employment, people, machines and how they changed and grew America. Sectioned off into themes, Truth and Justice, Jewelry, Pewter, and Prefab Housing- those are the places we didn't get to. Art, Sue, Jim and I must have walked ten of the twelve acres under one roof, because the transportation and wheels of industry collection is immense. When you walk in the door, you are face to face with one of the biggest train engines ever made, the 1601, an Allegheny, built with two engines working in concert. Its 76 feet long and could haul 27 million pounds of coal up over the mountains at a fast clip of 60 miles an hour.

A surprising number of successful electric cars, including some made by Ford, were in this museum. In fact, his wife liked the quiet, easy starting car so much, he bought one for her from a competitor after he quit making them. It was considered a ladies car from the start. They didn't have much range but distance wasn't an issue when the roads were bumpy and people didn't travel far from home.

 This electric car was one of Henry's. He sold a lot of them. Others were much earlier models from the late 1800's made by small companies that faded in time.

The convertible that Kennedy was killed in, with the steps on the back for the secret service. A top was made for it from bullet proof glass and President Reagan used it.

The first motorized school bus made was assembled by an employee of Ford Motors. He built a box with bench seats and attached it to the bed of a Ford Pick-up. It fell apart on the bumpy roads. He quit Ford and began making buses in earnest on a Ford Chassis and started the Bluebird Bus Company that still makes school buses today.

 Every Day the museum is open,  a new Model T is assembled on the spot with the help of people visiting the museum. It will run when finished, except, it has no gas in it. They build one each day and are now on their 845 one.  Not only do you get to see it put together, and sit in it, etc. but a mini assembly line floats above with the parts for a complete car hanging on wires overhead and moving to their position on the line.

Besides just about every imaginable vehicle, their development, engines and builders, the museum contains unusual vehicles of interest such as one of Charles Kurault's motorcoachs from his famous television show, On The Road With Charles Kurault.

  And Hector Quevora's Model A, driven from South America to Detroit  because his son wanted to see the museum. There was an early diesel-electric hybrid, from the 1920's I believe, if memory serves me, and every early bicycle and tricycle known to man. 

 Consider this "ten speed".

And this home made model with a fancy eagle head bar.
It was actually bikes that led to flight as Oliver and Wilbur Wright tinkered in their bike shop.

This model of the Kitty Hawk has the actual fabric from the real Kitty Hawk.

 There were many women pilots, including barnstorming daredevils in the 1930's. It only seems like Amelia Earhart was the only woman flier. Bessie Coleman was the first African American Woman in the world  to get her pilots license. (In 1921.)
Then there were the bizarre things in the museum, such as a sealed tube with the last breath of Thomas Edison captured in it. And this letter from Clyde Barrow.

Clyde Barrow so admired his stolen 1934 V-8 Ford that he wrote Henry Ford a congratulatory letter about his "fine car."  Not long after this letter was received by Ford, Bonnie and Clyde were shot to death in that very car.

He lived wild and free until the guns brought him and his Ford to an end.
Then the little oddities such as this sheet music in the museum.

Jack Frost wrote two songs about the Ford, You Can't Afford To Marry If You Can't Afford A Ford and I Didn't Raise My Ford To Be A Jitney.  What a hoot!

I got a kick out of this ad with the sorry looking Amantha and her Cod Liver Oil fan.

And when you read about the wheels of industry? They really were wheels.  Gigantic wheels, that turned turbines and kept those early steam engines pumping. 

The oldest known remaining steam pump is in this museum. You will find farm equipment, huge combines and corn planters and threshers, both old and fairly modern. There are craft shops here for younger people to learn how to run and maintain and build working machines of all  types.

If you are traveling with kids, there are a number of places in the museum that have kid's activities. Here kids are making vehicles that can be tried out on a couple of slide roads.

Or maybe you might simply want to wrap yourself up as a hot dog in the Oscar Mayer Wiener exhibit.
We certainly could have spent another day in this museum. We started the day with breakfast with Art, Sue, Art's parents and a friend, Lillie. And ended it with the Lambart's traditional Sunday dinner at home with Art's parents.

In fact, Lillie, on the right, wrote a song for Faith Hill, the country singer. They were waitresses together when they were young girls.
For more pictures, check out the link below:
http://picasaweb.google.com/1579penn/82210FordMuseum#

MOTOWN MUSEUM WITH SUE AND ART

The house above, on Detroit's West Grand Blvd., was purchased by Berry Gordy Jr. on a family loan of $800. He had sold his first song, Lonely Teardrops, and his pay was $3.75. His parents both owned businesses and he realized immediately that the middlemen were collecting the money on his work. He wanted control of his own work and talent. He decided to get a loan, (from his family) buy a house,  and open up a recording studio. It was a risk, but he was able to get it off the ground almost immediately since the black community was full of talent with little outlet for that talent in the general population. Most radio stations wouldn't play black music on white stations. One short range black station was all they had.

 Motown Record Company changed that in a big, big way. Over the years, came Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and The Supremes, Elaine Brown, The Jackson Five, The Platters, Billy Ekstein, Smokey Robinson, The Temptations...the list goes on and on. What a walk down memory lane is this fun, fun museum, even though no picture taking is allowed. In fact, Motown recorded Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream Speech. It was first given in Detroit and went over so well he used it several times, in Washington DC, in Montgomery, Alabama and elsewhere.
As business grew, Berry Gordon bought the house next door, and the one next to that, and another and another until he had eight buildings around the area that tested, recorded, trained, dressed and made history with new young musicians.

Starting out, Berry recorded in his garage and lived in a modest apartment upstairs. Part of the famous "Motown Sound" came from a hole in the ceiling that gave an echo to the singers that other studios tried to duplicate with equipment. It was just a hole in the ceiling. Sometimes, an artist was chosen by the following test. Berry would gather the employees in the studio and play a piece and ask, "If it was your last dollar and you were hungry, would you buy this record or would you buy the sandwich?"  He would ask them all and if one said, how hungry? or What kind of sandwich. He still considered that a vote for the artist because they hesitated.

 Motown got the first black act on Ed Sullivan's show. Motown got the first black act in a white night club. Berry knew that radio stations could only play from one label three times in a day. So he did the math and developed many labels. He actually recorded everything but classical music in his studio.
Motown records got to white stations by sending a record with a blurb with no picture of the artist. Kids liked the music, the beat, they could really dance to this stuff. When they finally saw the artist, and found out he or she was black, it was fine with them. In fact, the whole black musical community stuck together because of their training at Motown. Motown set the professional tone for black musicians and they succeeded.

Berry also recognized that black musicians had jobs, often shift work, just as he did on the assembly line at Ford at one time.  They couldn't come in and record from 8am to 5 pm. He kept the place open for 24 hours a day so musicians always had access to the studio. (Two hours of that time was used for cleaning.)
A singing or playing talent, didn't always know how to act on a big stage, in front of an audience. He hired a woman to teach them manners, to dress professionally, to always be on time, to practice good grooming, to choreograph their act and so on. It was an amazing transformation of talent to spectacular success.

After our visit, in which all of us sang and danced, (sort of), Jim's longtime friends,  Art and Sue Lambart led us to a Mexican Restaurant near where Art taught English as a second language at one time. He learned Spanish when he was building a Nuclear Power Plant in Mexico and has managed to retain his Spanish and likes to practice using it.

GROSSE ILE, MICHIGAN

Switching directions, we turned north on the west side of Lake Erie headed for an island in the Detroit River, Grosse Ile about 90 miles from Sandusky. We had chores to do, washing, dump and water on the way to Art and Sue Lambart's home, friends of Jim's since 1974. Jim and Art worked in the same power plant at one time.

Generally on the lookout for interesting stuff from my window, I was reading an intensely gripping novel called The Juror,  by George Green, and kept my nose in my book. Somehow,  managed to catch this old Mail Pouch Tobacco ad on the side of a barn. Saw one unrestored a couple days earlier but missed it as we whizzed by.

An interesting sign on this building, but  I didn't retain what type of business it was boosting.

I'm glad I didn't miss this bridge. Jim alerted me and from a distance it looked like a gigantic sail. A beauty. It is called the Veterans Glass City Skyway.

It changes perspective as you cross over.

This bridge to the island is locally called the free bridge. To the right you can see a garden in the middle of the river before arriving on the mainland shore. People who live here can commute to Detroit for work.
Sue had a great dinner for us and we chatted until bedtime, outlining our activities for the next couple days.
For a history of Grosse Ile click the link below.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosse_Ile_Township,_Michigan

HUGGING LAKE ERIE

We arrived late in the day at Ashtabula on the 18th, with the heat. It wasn't a friendly area of the city and we didn't see anything of the town, just tucked into the motor home and read and did paperwork, made a few phone calls until bedtime.
 In the morning we lit out for Sandusky, staying away from the interstates, following Highway 6, 2, and 24, hugging Lake Erie. Having grown up on the Great Lakes, in the Upper peninsula of Michigan, I'm familiar with them but had not traveled anywhere near the south side of Lake Erie.
First, though, we threaded our way through Cleveland. An appealing place, with a pretty skyline and home of the Cleveland Browns.

A bit of Cleveland skyline through the window.

 Got a passing shot at the Cleveland Browns Stadium.

 Our first good glimpse of the lake, with a barely visible lighthouse out on a point.
Leaving Cleveland, I took a number of photos of the blue, beauty.

Below, the Huron River dumps into the Lake.

The drive was quite scenic, unhurried and uneventful.

I got a skewed picture of this old building where the owner has nicely allowed an old painted ad to remain. Its says, Honest Scrap. Below, that, 5 cents. Could be a pack of cigs. Our computers no longer contain a cents sign. Not much use for it.

 

An asphalt parking lot in front of a grocery store had nary a tree, but sported instead some electrical assistance with a generating windmill. I spotted three stand alones in as many days. I wish more businesses would to that.

Our last stop of the day, Sandusky. The American Legion Post 83 put us up for the night in their back lot. A huge place-the third largest in the U.S. It had a great restaurant and we enjoyed a nice dinner and good draft beer. We are on our way to visit friends of Jim's on the Detroit River for a few days.