Camping Buddies, Industrial Giants
Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone et.al. around the campfire.
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My buddies and I have loved camping and roughing it ever since we were kids.
Over the years our camping skills grew until our proficiency consisted of successfully enduring wet and cold, ignoring dirt and mosquitoes, learning to eat scrambled pancakes and charred meat, embracing the lack of sleep and the fact that we all smelled like campfire smoke and could actually tell the difference between the Big Dipper and the moon.
But then we got a little older and learned good sense and discovered a smarter way to camp out in the woods which included wooden cots, Coleman lanterns, folding lawn chairs, portable gas stoves, butane fire starters, star charts and a supply of dry ice for freezing fish filets and making more ice out of the water supply for evening cocktails.
I thought we had reached the pinnacle of roughing it in the wild and I was boastful about the accomplishment until I stumbled into an article about a group of campers who called themselves “The Vagabonds” and got quickly put back in place. Here were possibly the best known and most important American business and political celebrities of their day “roughing it” in the woods in a style way above our pay grade and showing us how it was done if you were able to swing it.
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Their idea of camping out included getting into the wilderness in a multi-car and truck caravan which included a large gas stove, an electrical generator provided by Edison for lighting up the camp, a big tent which housed a fully-staffed kitchen, private tents with mosquito screens for each of the “campers”, a 9-foot diameter, “lazy susan” table for the dining tent and an accompanying staff of chefs and butlers numbering twenty or more people to serve their every want.
I soon realized that all we had to do was throw a vault of cash at one of these expeditions and we could have made our own wilderness version of Shangri-la.
My goodness! Why didn’t we ever think of that?
No, we were forced by lack of foresight to endure such refinements as cooking on an open fire or a rickety Coleman stove, swimming without bathing trunks, building our own “bar” out of a styrofoam cooler or driftwood, blowing up our own leaky air mattresses, sleeping with tag teams of mosquitoes and stumbling around for firewood at night using only the light of the moon.
But, oh, wasn’t it marvelous!
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We got a late start one year and didn’t get down to the boat until very late at night. After banging through the ocean for an hour, we anchored just off the leeward shore of the island and waded onto the beach with the gear, too tired to get the tents up. We just threw them on the ground and crawled underneath to keep the mosquitoes at bay and went to sleep. It was a luxury Ford and the boys probably wouldn’t have permitted themselves.
Had we only given it some thought, we could possibly have been icons of science and industry ourselves. But, no, out of charitable motives we elected not to steal the “Vagabonds” thunder and just to leave them in their electrified woodsy glory and stick to our Coleman lanterns and mosquitoes.
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The truth is that these men really were important contributors to American life. And also to our prosperity and well-being. The naturualist, John Borroughs, who accompanied the group, was a formidable influence in American conservation and provided wisdom and poetry to the group. The inventions and refinements of Edison, Ford and Firestone literally gave light to the world and put it on wheels.
They would have loved Horn Island as much as we did but they’d be required to get there by boat.
Those men remain legends of America’s history. There is no doubt that each of them had to push the limits of human will and resourcefulness to create and elaborate upon their innovations. Their work changed the world. I beleive they had to know that about themselves and that they drove themselves hard through many a sleepless night to realize their success.
I also believe they had a great deal of fun every year, breaking away from the pressures of business to plunge into the woods. There is a unique bliss available to anyone hearing crickets and looking at the moon through pine trees and breathing the pure, clean air of the forest and smelling coffee brewing over a pre-dawn fire and raising a glass with your pals at sunset.
For all I know there may be a genetic component deep inside our evolutionary past, gently but persuasively luring us back to the wilderness. Otherwise, why would being there feel so grandly satisfying? The “Vagabonds” could have left their dining tents and field kitchens and generators behind and sailed off to glorious pleasures along the Riviera or catered voyages on the Nile or to the Pyramids but they did not. They chose instead the company of each other in the greatness of Americas wild places.
Your recipe for the week is maybe the best barbecued chicken you ever tasted. The plan for the sauce was given to me many years ago by my friend, Jerry Collins in Augusta, Georgia. It always impresses anybody who tastes it and it’s yours just below the paywall below.
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Thank you!
Bob
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