There is an old Ford fire truck
out front at Alberta Village, near the pumphouse for the Henry Ford Sawmill. The truck is on loan to the Museum from the L'Anse Fire Department. Identification plates riveted to each side of the truck: "Pirsch Fire Equipment - Kenosha, Wisc. - 1-18-38."
Here is where Henry Ford established a sawmill and model community in 1936. The mill was operated by the Ford Motor Company until 1954.
The pumphouse is closer to Highway 41 than the mill is. It "was used to pump water from Lake Plumbago (across the highway) to the mill." It also provided water for fighting fires and is still used for the town's fire hydrants.
Immediately as you enter the pumphouse, there is a display case showing photos and mementos of the Ford Pequaming operation up along Keweenaw Bay. A photo of the mill crew looking surly or tired or both. A photo of rag-tag children "Homeward Bound from School." A photo of a group of men and women, boys and girls at "Potato Harvesting." All of them are in sweaters and caps and gloves. Some of them have potato forks. One of the women looks amazingly like our elder daughter, Jenifer, and I think of the tromp tromp of the generations. Our lives get spent; we are cogs in the great wheel's turning; nothing is lost - it comes back in some other form or the same form some other time. You look into the eyes of those potato diggers and understand at once both what has been lost and what these folks have built.
The pump. Ah, yes. Nearly eternal metal, a Dayton-Dowd Co. Centrifugal Fire Pump with a capacity of "500 gallons per minute against 100 pounds of pressure or 2 good 1.5 inch smooth nozzle fire streams." The diameter of the impeller is twelve inches. At full speed, the pump ran 2200 rpm. The sign promises it "never will fail to have ample power to drive pump at full capacity."
As I come out of the pumproom, I examine another display case across the way from that with Pequaming memorabilia. This one has a poster of Babe Ruth, "who shows how to use Louisville Slugger bats." Should we suppose the wood for those bats came from the U.P.? There's another poster, of a 1953 Ford tractor - the Golden Jubilee model. "Power that purrs when the going gets tough." That's not how I remember it. I grew up with a Ford tractor, it was a good little tractor, but I'd never say it purred. "Ford Farming," the poster says in those days before truth in advertising, "means less work - more income per acre." Compared to what, I wonder.
Then I cross the lawn to the sawmill itself. The lawns are being mowed by several men with several big mowers. They are working too hard to be government workers. When one of them turns his back to me, I see what we've got here: "AMF Prisoner" it says. I notice the black stripe down the outside of each pant leg. These fellows mean business; they work steady, without stopping. I do not know who is watching them.
I enter the sawmill, built to produce lumber for Ford's production of automobiles. "Ford required wood for car bodies, shipping crates, pallets, and building materials," a sign says. "You will see an interesting example of sawmill technology, community planning, and the power of one man's vision to create a better environment for his workers."
The community was named Alberta, to honor the daughter of F.G. Johnson, manager of Ford's Upper Peninsula operation. The mill employed up to twenty-two people producing as much as 16,000 board feet of lumber per day. The operation remained much smaller than Ford's plant at Pequaming. In 1923 Ford purchased the town of Pequaming and 40,000 acres of hardwood forest; this plant employed three hundred workers, virtually everyone in town. Ford also got his summer cottage with the purchase, although the home is really too elaborate to be called a "cottage." We're told that Ford used the cottage only a few days each summer - though if you hear the locals talk, they'll say he never slept a night in the place. Oh, to be so well off you can own a summer home you never use.
To be continued....
"I think of the tromp tromp of the generations. Our lives get spent; we are cogs in the great wheel's turning; nothing is lost - it comes back in some other form or the same form some other time." How well that describes that almost sad, bittersweet feeling that sometimes overwhelm me when I look at my late parent's old photo albums full of long-gone family and nameless-to-me friends.
Posted by: Marja-Leena | September 19, 2004 at 11:23 AM
Marja-Leena--that's exactly the sentiment I was trying to convey, I think. Thanks for the good word.
Posted by: Tom Montag | September 21, 2004 at 06:45 AM