I soon went to work for Fairbanks Morse in the Engineering Department of the Railroad Division in Three Rivers, Michigan. Don’t be mislead, when I say that I worked in the Engineering Department. I was actually hired to operate their Blueprint Machine at $15.00 per week. It was a Peerless, just like the ones at Dodge Brothers, so I had a pretty good idea of what I was about. After I had been there a short time they found out that I could make a drawing, so when they got behind, I would get a chance to make some minor detail drawings, but nothing of any great consequence.
To work in the Motor Car Division of Fairbanks Morse was sort of like coming back home, because my dad had worked in that same Railroad Division for five or six years, in the early 1920’s. He worked in the Motor Car Assembly section and would, sometimes, take one of the new cars out on their test track and give it a trial run. There were a couple of times, when he was going to test one on a Saturday, that I went down and rode with him. That was quite a thrill for a 12 year old boy. When I went to work for them, as a twenty year old, they were still building the same Motor Car, so it seemed like I knew where I was.