Excerpt

He caught a Greenline bus for Detroit and then Rochester. Arriving after dark he walked about six hours to Five Points. In the light of the moon he saw the sign for Squirrel Road and wondered why nobody thought of a better name. He followed the dirt road about two miles. Noticing lights through the trees, Old Bill got no closer. Opening a long steel-swinging gate, he walked inside, close to a large red barn, looming up in the moonlight.

Walking down below kennels and another red barn, he turned left, near screened pheasant pens. The heavily wooded area on the right had almost covered up a rusty old trailer house. The door was unlocked. Inside and bone weary he could feel a bed frame with a hole riddled mattress. Pushing aside cobwebs, he slumped down on it and was asleep like a burned out candle.

At first light he awakened. Leaving the trailer house, a path took him up the slope past the same pheasant pens and a dog cemetery, to the tool shed. The door was unlocked. Grabbing an axe, rake and pruners, he retraced his steps back to the trailer.

About two hours later, Joe Lewis craved a big juicy beefsteak tomato for breakfast. He headed up the hill past the engine house for the garden. The rich black soil had produced the same lush vegetables years on end. The path took him between the pump house and the bunkhouse and would have taken him downhill to the garden. In that split second, he looked back over his right shoulder and noticed the door to the tool shed was open. Immediately, he heard the whacks and sounds of an axe.

The noise caused him to walk between the playhouse and the dog cemetery, down toward the pheasant pens. Underneath a droopy cowboy hat, shirt dripping sweat, his smile showing snuff stained, busted teeth, stood the last American cowboy.

His first day on the ranch was well underway. Around six feet had been cleared on each side of the trailer house and six feet above it. One of the two red barns was now visible.

“Hello” said Joe Lewis, shaking hands. “Howdy” said Old Bill Hendershot. Neither man had ever seen the other. And that was how it began on Wesburn Ranch.

Jackson Alexander Wesburn was born in 1889, somewhere back east. He attended Yale University, graduating in 1912. He looked like James Cagney, and was nicknamed Jaws by the ranch crew. None dared call him by that name. He was The General. Possessed of great wealth he had finesse combined with strength. Burlap bags are rough and wear well. So did Jaws. Everybody liked him.

He could talk up hill at a big house dinner and down hill the next day. Drinking gin some of the time, he drank scotch part of the time. Sitting on the board of huge corporations was no different than sitting on the seat of the big power mower at the tool shed. If he wanted to compliment his crew for their hard work or fire them up, this is where he did it once monthly, on Saturday noons. He always passed out a case or two of Goebels beer.

After serving in the Army in WWI, the General returned to the family home in Oyster Bay, New York. Suddenly his father died. Taking several thousand dollars of inheritance, young Wesburn took a train to Detroit. It was 1920. He had made up his mind that Henry Ford, cars and assembly lines would be the source of great wealth. Investing astutely in emerging industries related to the automobile, Jackson Alexander Wesburn found immediate success and money rolled in his direction.

Mixed with folks like Old Bill and the General, Lina and Joe Lewis with sons Jack, Ted and Ken were part of an American revolution. In the nineteen twenties nobody talked about it because nobody knew it was coming.

The ranch was a quiet world all its own. Time stretched over a century of contrast. There were still horses and trains but the brains for a change burst across the land. The General called what was coming, “Power to the second square.”

Over the Horizon it would seem as if a ball of fire exploded. Piston engines would move weight on the ground or in the air.

Henry Ford had been selling black cars in 1914 and would be paying five dollars an hour. A guy named Doolittle was on his way to becoming a General. Mechanized warfare with swift moving tanks were being secretly built in Germany. The Luftwaffe had hidden thousands of newer, faster fighter planes and bigger bombers.

One Saturday, the General talked to the twelve man crew about how many things were being discovered and invented. “The twentieth century will eclipse the first nineteen.”

Old Bill nudged Reuben Proctor and said “Jaws is off his porch. Nothin’ can happen that fast.”

Doctor Proctor, who looked like Peter Lorre with thick glasses, commented, “Don’t worry about it. A hundred years from now we’ll all be dead.” Nobody knew what he meant and neither did he.

Nestled in between the horse and outer space, Detroit would become the war engine of democracy for World War II. The ranch near Rochester was unaware of what was coming. Scientific and manufacturing concepts were in the labs. Outside was a period of lull.