Inventors’ excursions grow tedious
Beginning in 1915 and continuing until 1925, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone — dubbing themselves “The Vagabonds” — embarked on summer road trips, camping, collaborating and courting publicity individually and collectively for their invented excursions.
In “The Vagabonds,” to be released Tuesday, Texas journalist Jeff Guinn (author of the biography “Manson”) exhaustively details these trips as well as the accomplishments and events happening at the time in the lives of the famous inventor, the car manufacturer and the rubber tiremaker.
Ford and the older Edison had established a friendship based on mutual admiration that led to their ownership of adjacent winter homes in Fort Myers, Florida, where the Edison and Ford winter estates remain a popular tourist attraction today.
It fell to the Ohioan Firestone, the least famous of the trio, to plan and take care of the trips’ details, which included putting together an entourage of cars (including Ford’s popular Model T, of course), tents and camping gear, amenities for their wives when they accompanied them, food and meal preparers and the itinerary.
Destinations included the Florida Everglades; the West Coast; Licking Creek, West Virginia, where they were joined by then-president Warren G. Harding; and Plymouth Notch, Vermont, home of the next president, Calvin Coolidge.
The enamored media wrote about these trips under headlines such as “Wow! The World’s Brains Go Out for an Airing” and “Three Monarchs of Industry to Try Gypsy Life.”
The press followed the group’s activities including wood chopping, hiking and bird-watching with the elderly naturalist John Burroughs, who occasionally joined the trio and became its curmudgeon and chronic complainer.
By 1925, thanks to burgeoning movie and radio audiences, Ford, Edison and Firestone found themselves competing for publicity with a new roster of celebrities such as Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. And, the Vagabonds were aging; the 78-year-old Edison was the first to stop traveling.
Guinn’s account is filled with anecdotes from the trips — some entertaining and others less so. He goes into lengthy discussions of the idiosyncrasies and flaws of Edison and Ford, especially Ford’s anti-semitism largely spewed through articles in the newspaper he bought and operated, the Dearborn (Michigan) Independent.
The glimpses of early automobile travel are fascinating. From state to state and even within one state, speed limits were not uniform. California allowed 10 miles per hour in “built-up territory,” 15 mph in cities or towns and 20 mph outside those two areas.
Drivers routinely camped without permission on farmers’ lands. Gravel or dirt roads tore tires, chipped paint and cracked windshields. Gas was most likely found at mom and pop grocerystore pumps. As conditions and cars improved, more Americans began to partake in “auto-camping,” and the Vagabonds’ adventures became less noteworthy.
Guinn’s book is more of a chronological report than a stirring narrative. Descriptions of the excursions become too detailed and repetitive, prompting one to wish that instead of a 320-page book, the author might have considered a hefty New Yorker magazine article. Nevertheless, “The Vagabonds” is an interesting glimpse into a slice of these inventors’ lives not often seen.
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