I was then on the
farm to which I had returned, more because I wanted to
experiment than because I
wanted to farm, and, now being an all-around
machinist, I had a first-class
workshop to replace the toy shop of
earlier days. My father
offered me forty acres of timber land, provided
I gave up being a machinist. I
agreed in a provisional way, for cutting
the timber gave me a chance to
get married. I fitted out a sawmill and a
portable engine and started to
cut out and saw up the timber on the
tract. Some of the first of
that lumber went into a cottage on my new
farm and in it we began our
married life. It was not a big
house--thirty-one feet square
and only a story and a half high--but it
was a comfortable place. I
added to it my workshop, and when I was not
cutting timber I was working
on the gas engines--learning what they were
and how they acted. I read
everything I could find, but the greatest
knowledge came from the work.
A gas engine is a mysterious sort of
thing--it will not always go
the way it should. You can imagine how
those first engines acted!
Excerpt from "My Life and Work" by Henry Ford and Samuel
Crowther
Project
Gutenberg www.gutenberg.org
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