Go to
Chapter 19

Table of Contents

Chapter 18: Slugs 

Jim McBain sat at the desk in his office in the Ford Design Center leaning back with my ’73 job application in his right hand and the ’77 application in his left. He turned his whole head to read each of them item by item as I sat across from him in my only suit and tie trying to look calm and confident but not too calm or too confident. I could tell which application was which by the letters of recommendation from AM that he skimmed and detached from the newest application to read it.  

Shit! I thought, What if something doesn’t match? Putting that fear in me was clearly the point of putting on this little show. McBain didn’t need both forms to check my qualifications, particularly with the letters of recommendation as part of the current on. He certainly didn’t need for me to see him doing it so conspicuously. No, he wanted me to squirm. He wanted me to doubt myself and make a slip that would disqualify me.   

I wasn’t worried that he might turn thumbs-down on me. If he did, his vote and McKinley Thompson’s vote would cancel each other out. That would leave it up to the other three clay modeling Managers, Benny Barbara, Jim Doyle and Gill Treweek. Benny had always been on my side. The only two I had to worry about were Doyle and Treweek.  

With Schiloff’s school, Ford, Chrysler and American Motors on my record, I had six solid years of modeling experience. I had superb letters of recommendation from Stan Johnson, Gary Guchard and Russ Franz, two Senior Designers and a Modeling Leader at American Motors. On top of that, my military service record included leadership positions in the Army Reserves and a Commendation Medal from the Regular Army. As far as I knew, the only official reason that Ford didn’t rehire me in ’73 was because I asked for too much money. I made sure not to make that mistake again by pricing myself three hundred dollars a month below the going rate for modelers with my experience. I knew that Ford Personnel would have to give me one or two hundred dollars more.  

I didn’t see how I could miss getting in. Sitting across from the bearded manager I’d met in the lobby two and a half years earlier I cringed inwardly at the prospect of working for a guy like this. According to Garry’s information, Ford was looking for 30 clay modelers. According to Jim McBain, I was there first. Yeah, I thought, four years ago!  

It never entered my mind that I would be turned down or that I would end up working for Harry the Nazi or Vic the Klansman again. They were Master Modelers doing the job of a Supervisor only because the Supervisor disinclined to do it himself. I’d always thought that getting stuck with them at the start of my career was a fluke.

McBain concluded our session with a caution that he had many more people to interview before he could make a decision on whether or not to recommend hiring me. I took that as a thumbs-down. Where was he going to find thirty modelers over and above the ones who where called back from the layoff with better credentials than mine?  

Gill Treweek, an average-sized man with a full-sized handlebar mustache and oversized glasses put me at ease with his toothy grin. He was polished and articulate. We conversed easily. He had an extensive vocabulary and seemed delighted that we could speak on an equal plain. He told me that my letters of recommendation were “incredible.”    

My interview with McKinley Thompson was a laugher. He had already hired me to do private work for him and he asked me to help a black Clay Tech named Melvin Edwards with building a clay model that would move him up to a B-modeler. McKinley knew what I could do. The letters of recommendation I showed him from American Motors blew him away. He had never seen three of them with the same company letterhead that were as effusive in praise or as varied in the particulars.  

Gary leaned heavily on my technical proficiency, my intelligence and my personality although he admitted that we were friends. Stan said that he had worked with modelers as a designer at Chrysler and AM for twenty years and that my work was “right up there with the best of them.” Russ emphasized the need for versatility and creativity at American Motors. He and said that he always found me to be equal to any task and that I would still be with AM had it not been for the general reduction in force. 

Actually, I had four letters of recommendation that McKinley thought were impressive. The one I got from my supervisor Chuck Hosper didn’t look that great to me so I didn’t include it in my application. To me, it was the kiss of death. Hosper knew as well as I did how important it was for Ford to see me on the level of an “Outstanding” A-modeler or Sculptor as the other three letters suggested. He said some good things about me and ended his letter on a high note. Yet, he wrote that I performed “satisfactorily as a B-modeler,” which contradicted his words of praise. It looked too much like the words Vic Clark had used in my first ever Performance Review.  

In ’77 I still didn’t know that “Satisfactory” was the same as unsatisfactory on Ford’s Design Center Performance Reviews. I did know that Hosper had rated Felix DeRose and Chuck Beudreu as “Outstanding” when they had less time in the business than I had and that both of them had moved up to the equivalent of Sculptor-modelers at AM in less than six years. Because Hosper had been my last supervisor I expected Ford to give him a call with or without his letter.

I knew Chuck Hosper better than he knew himself. He wasn’t being malicious. He wasn’t being honest, either. He was covering his ass.  

Ford and American Motors were competitors in a highly competitive business. Hosper knew that I could be an impact player at Ford with my knowledge of AM’s product line two or three years down the road and my knowledge of how to cut Ford’s lead time down to two years or less. The wording of his letter told me that he was afraid of putting me in a position where someone in authority at Ford would listen to me.  

Hosper also knew that I filed racial discrimination charges against American Motors over my B-modeler status. He knew that I let the claim expire and he knew that I didn’t want to file it in the first place.  I knew that he was defending AM’s decision not to promote me just in case the issue came up in court. I knew that he would be driven by whatever political concern that was most pressing to him at any given moment. There was therefore no way for me to be sure of what he would say in a one-on-one private conversation with a representative of Ford. I had to lowball my salary demand just in case Hosper said something negative on the phone that he didn’t tell me or put in his letter, something that would preclude me from even discussing salary with Ford.  

Salary was, in fact, the only thing Ford’s Personnel representative discussed when I filled out the ’77 application that kicked off the interview process. Tom Powell was the Personnel rep who signed Ford’s August ’74 rejection letter. This guy’s name was Metric. 

Normally one would go into salary negotiations with a high demand and settle for less if necessary. The last time I tried that with Tom Powell I never got the chance to negotiate. I didn’t even know that was the official reason for holding up my application until he rejected it a year and a half later. Now I knew that I had to start at the low end and work my way up.  

Metric pointed to the money I entered in the “Salary Requirements” box and asked me if I was “firm on that figure.” He asked me that question even though in the “Wish to Discuss” box I wrote “Yes.” Looking back at the specter of the Friend of the Court gave me pause. Looking ahead at my future career if I settled for less gave me no reasonable alternative. This was the negotiation I expected when Powell called me in ’74. The critical difference is that I thought I would be starting the negotiation in ’74 with a figure that matched what I believed I was worth.  

Metric and I both knew that this “negotiation” was more like a game of poker with him holding my cards as well as his. When Calvin Morrison got laid off in ’75 he was an A-modeler. He told me how much money he was making then and that he was going to try to come back as a Sculptor. Between Calvin, Sam and Nehemiah I got some hint as to what I could ask for and what I could afford to settle for. The only thing they were all sure of was the entry-level minimum. Metric knew what he was going to pay me because he knew the going rate for modelers with my experience

The talk about money gave me the opportunity to influence Metric’s assessment of what the going rate should be for me.  

Before I started filling out the application I asked Metric if I could use my ARCOM citation and the letters of recommendation from AM to supplement what I wrote about myself. An award for outstanding achievement in any large organization had to be a plus in accounting for my time away from modeling. The letters of recommendation spoke for themselves. Metric said he would put them on top of the application so that they would be the first things anyone read when they looked at it. That’s why the application without them looks incomplete. It is. My only reference to AM on the form itself is in the box where I describe my work experience at Chrysler. I entered “Same as American Motors.”  

While Metric was looking everything over I told him some of the things I’d learned in other areas that were applicable to clay modeling, leadership and to being a good overall employee.   

Metric seemed impressed with my argument. He made copies of the letters and the citation and paper-clipped them to the application. He was all smiles and less “official” in his demeanor than before. He talked to me as though he was and old friend, giving me the inside scoop on how things really worked at Ford. He leveled with me about Ford’s pay policy for modelers. I wasn’t sure what that meant because he had to be a moron not to have discerned through our conversation that I had already guessed that much. He was no moron. 

Metric told me that because my seniority wasn’t continuous, Ford considered me a new hire. It was standard company policy to bring every new hire in as a B-modeler within a standard range of pay.  The hidden part of the policy that he shared with me was the wide range of pay for B-modelers, who were now classified as salary grade-5. The pay scales for 5’s, 6’s and 7’s overlapped so much that a grade-5 B-modeler could make more than a grade-7 Sculptor.  

What he didn’t say was that few modelers ever made it to the top of any pay grade. He didn’t say that some modelers were brought in at the top or that I was going to be pulled aboard near the bottom.  He didn’t tell me what the top or the bottom was but he told me enough to figure it out. I never dreamed that one B-modeler could make twice as much money as another one or that remaining a B-modeler for the first year could put me financially ahead of a Sculptor.

Metric told me flat out what my salary was going to be but he seemed genuinely excited about explaining why he thought that I could make up ground in a hurry. By talking to me he said that he could tell I had a lot on the ball. He said that I presented myself well.[1] He said that the letters of recommendation would carry a lot of weight after I was hired if I proved to my supervisor, meaning the first supervisor he assigned me to, that I measured up to them. He said that he had confidence that I would. Then he explained why hiring in as a B-modeler was a good deal for me. 

This is the way he broke it down: 

I come in at $1,300 a month.[2] 

In my first year I’m eligible for promotion in six months. I can get as much as a 12% merit increase.  That’s $1,456 a month, which was close to the figure I actually thought I was worth. Metric seemed to be saying that he thought so, too. 

Six months later I could get another 12% increase. That would put my monthly salary over $1,700 in one year, not counting the money I would get with the 3% annual improvement factor that Ford gave all of its salaried employees along with a lump sum cost of living check every six months that was indexed to the rate of inflation. 

In my second year, I would not be eligible for a merit increase. I couldn’t get that until the following year. However, the company could make me an A-modeler in six months, at which point I could get a promotion increase of 12% and be eligible for a 12% merit increase in anther six months. Baring another layoff, that was more money in two years than I expected to make in the next five years.  

It was more money than I did make in the next 10 years…. 

The first hurdle I had to clear was getting hired. With Benny Barbara, Gill Treweek, McKinley Thompson and Metric in my corner I thought it would be a cakewalk. I assumed that Powell, who was now Metric’s boss, told him not to schedule me for an interview with Benny because Benny had given his okay twice before. Jim Doyle was on vacation so not getting an interview with him didn’t need an explanation. The five silent weeks following my Treweek interview did need an explanation. 

I didn’t want to call Ford to see what the holdup was so I called McKinley Thompson. He was as mystified as I was. He knew that Ford was hiring modelers and one of them was black. He wanted to know if I had a skeleton in my closet. Did I have a drug habit? Was a portrait of me hanging in the Post Office? Could I think of anything he didn’t know about me that would override what he did know?  

The only thing I could think of was the time I got thrown in jail for “refusing to support my family” but I had already made arrangements with the Friend of the Court for a wage assignment when Ford hired me. 

McKinley said that he would check around. The nest day called me.  

“Jazz,” he said, “ They don’t want you.” 

“What?” 

“McBain said that you dressed too neatly. He didn’t think you should have worn a suit. He said that you looked like the kind of guy who was afraid to get his fingernails dirty.” McKinley’s voice trailed off…. “Yeah, that surprised me. I thought McBain was a straight shooter.” 

“You’re kidding,” I said, getting a new perspective on why Tom Powell had picked Benny and McBain to interview me in ’74. Could it be that he also thought McBain was a straight shooter?  

“No. I’m not kidding,” said McKinley. “Of all the Managers, I thought that McBain and Benny were the most honest – except for me, of course. I didn’t think he was prejudiced. Maybe he is.” 

“Maybe? Come on… What about Treweek?” 

McKinley laughed, but not as though he thought anything was funny. “Treweek said that you were too smooth. He thought that the letters of recommendation were fake ’cause nobody is that good. He told me that he believed you wrote them yourself.”  

I was stunned – for two reasons. Treweek had been my pick for the good guy. I misjudged him completely. The second stunner was something in the way McKinley told me about Treweek’s objection to me that seemed to trouble him. Was it a hint of doubt about me?

Drawing in a deep breath and letting in out slowly, I said, “Think about it Mack, “Those letters were written on American Motors stationary. They had telephone numbers. Ma Bell has AM’s phone number. If Treweek thought that I might have written those letters myself all he had to do was pick up the goddamn phone.” 

Silence… 

“You’re right!” said McKinley, as though I had given him a magnifying glass to read the fine print on a document that said something different in bold type. “The thing is they talked to the guys you worked for when you were at Ford the first time and they said you weren’t that hot.” 

They? Did he mean Treweek and McBain, Treweek, McBain and Metric or just Metric and one of the Managers? And who were the guys they talked to? It was up to Metric to call me or not to call me so he had to be in there somewhere. Besides, it was his job to make that kind of inquiry.[3]  

“Mack,” I said, “I worked at American Motors two years ago. The letters were written last month. I was a rookie at Ford 10 years ago – and who did I work for?” 

He chuckled in his deep, he-he-he fashion. “Good ol’ Vic Clark.”  

“Who else?” 

“You made your point. I’ll check in at Personnel again tomorrow.  

“Again?” So he did talk to Metric. 

Whatever McKinley said did the trick. A week later I sat down to a perfunctory interview with Jim Doyle.  

On March 29, 1977 I was once again a B-modeler at Ford Motor Co…. 

When Metric assigned me to Jim McBain’s Truck studio I could see all of those 12% merit increases he told me about flying out of the window no matter how I performed. Truck had men who were as proudly and openly racist as Vick Clark and who knows how many Harry Finleys and Ty Hervonans. Fortunately my Supervisor John Cecil wasn’t one of them. Unfortunately, he didn’t believe in giving Outstanding P/Rs on general principle unless a modeler came into Truck with an “O.” In that event, John Cecil was bound by company customs and regulations to give the modeler another “O” if he maintained his level of performance. Otherwise, he believed firmly in the inherent meaning of words. To him Satisfactory meant satisfactory. Satisfactory-Plus meant satisfactory-plus. Excellent meant excellent. Outstanding meant nothing because excellent was as high as anyone in the real world could go.  

Truck had the reputation in the Design Center of being a dumping ground for “slugs,” old, tired, has-beens or never-weres who couldn’t cut it anywhere else. The slug label did fit some of the modelers and seemed at first glance to fit others who were actually very good. Truck needed a few top-notch modelers to keep it running and it had some who were recognized as such. They were conspicuous exceptions to the rule. If you were sent to truck it usually meant that nobody else wanted you.  

Truck had modelers who could do their job well when they were sober but no one ever saw them completely sober. It had modelers who never learned the basics and modelers who simply refused to work. It had good modelers who were so hard to get along with that nobody wanted to work with them, modelers with irritating personalities, bad tempers, nasty attitudes and general disdain for the human race. Nearly all of them considered themselves vastly superior to me on sight.  

A rookie modeler named Leonard Gross and I became instant friends. Leonard was Jewish. He was starting his clay modeling career in his mid 40s. He had been in the studio a week before I got there. He was bright, hard working and eager to learn. He didn’t know squat about clay. I spent as much of my time as I could teaching him and learning from him a wealth of things not directly connected to modeling. However, the depth and breath of his knowledge had to come in handy somewhere on the job. It seemed to me like a good enough reason for hiring him.  

The downside of our association was that most of the modelers saw both of us as rookies. Roger Dowey, the alcoholic Master Modeler that John Cecil matched us up with before he learned what I could do, always put us together on the same one-man jobs. Whenever Leonard would make a typical rookie mistake both of us would get tagged for it. Jim McBain dropped by the studio often to teach both of us things like how to hold a spline, when to use a steel and what a good knife line should look like.  

Proving that I wasn’t a rookie, even to the modelers who were friendly to me was an uphill struggle. The first time I got to do a body side two men in the crew, Mike Aloie and John O’Connor, took up positions on both sides of me and worked towards each other until they literally squeezed me out. The next time I worked on a body side, Jim Doyle’s younger brother Dan, redid everything I did automatically.

Truck studio had two rookie modelers who came form the shops, Al Sanson from the Trim Shop and Howard Thompson from the Paint Shop. With ten years each in the Design Center they had learned enough through osmoses to be light-years ahead of Leonard Gross. But, with only a few weeks on the job they had much to learn to catch up with me.

Howard Thompson was the first to see it. I was doing something that was new to him. It solved a clay modeling problem that he was struggling with at the time and led to conversations about various approaches to expanding our scope of professional knowledge. We shared the belief that modelers should openly share what they knew to elevate the entire profession. The things he taught me about preparing clay surfaces for paint served me well for the rest of my career. 

Howard and I shared bad experiences with the Friend of the Court and an unreasonable Family Court judge. When I was going through my toughest time with the Friend of the Court I got help from the President of the City Counsel Carl Levin. He put me in contact with a college buddy of his who specialized in cases were men were being thrown in jail by judges who simply refused to look at the evidence in their defense. Two judges topped the top of his list. I had one of them. Howard had the other. 

The more I connected with the people in the studio on common levels of human experience, the more their eyes widened to see what I could do as a modeler. It was something different with almost everyone.  

Ken Sailor, a laid-back stylist with piercing eyes and a wicked smile latched onto the silver wings on my watchband. He was proud of having been an Army draftee and rarely missed an opportunity to joke about the difference between draftees and volunteers. Although some draftees went airborne, to Ken’s way of thinking, their wings made them volunteers.  

One of Ken’s favorite pastimes was to compare me to Roger Dowey, who had been a paratrooper in the late ’50’s. Roger once broke a leg jumping out of a three-story window at a party to show off his Parachute Landing Fall prowess. He might have done better if he had been sober. Then again, I never saw Roger sober – and I can’t think of why anyone would pull a stunt like that if he were sober.  

Ken loved to stand within earshot of Roger when he told me, “Only fools and bird shit fall from the sky.” I thought it was hilarious. Roger didn’t. That made it even funnier to Ken and me because it put Roger in the impossible position of either taking it or defending me in order to defend himself. For Roger it was like choosing between identifying himself as a fool or a bird turd.  

An older modeler named Bergie Manugian had a passion for helicopters. When I told him that the only jumping I did in Vietnam was out of helicopters from ten or fifteen feet in the air, his face lit up and he asked me if I had pictures of the helicopters. He wanted to build a radio control model and he didn’t have enough good pictures to work from. My yearbook from my time with the 173^rd Airborne Brigade had lots of helicopter pictures so I brought it in for him. He was thrilled to the core. 

The following day he came to me with the look of a man who had the task of reporting grim news. Someone had stolen the book from his tabaret, a steel tool chest on wheels that modelers used as portable desks for personal items as well as tools. He knew that the loss was irreplaceable and he was as devastated as I was about the theft.  

I couldn’t blame Bergie. How could anyone have predicted that someone would steal an item of priceless personal value like that? The grinning faces of Roger Dowey, John O’Connor and Mike Aloie, and the shame-faced looks of Gary Kubitsky and some of the other modelers told me that they knew who the thief was. Truck was not loaded with bigots but it was loaded with people who tolerated them. 

I never learned who stole the book but from then on Gary went out of his way to be friendly to me. A modeler with a deep Southern accent name Len Elledge, who had been openly hostile to me before the theft also became friendlier toward me.  

Len was not a good modeler and he was not very good at disguising his racist attitudes, but he was clearly impressed with my modeling and clearly uncomfortable with his racial views. He wasn’t used to working with black people and I didn’t fit any of his stereotypes so his curiosity about me grew to a point where he had to find out why I was so different.  

The more we talked, the more things we saw what we had in common. Len had also been a paratrooper and a combat Engineer. He told stories that sounded so outlandish that the other modelers assumed he was lying. My experience told me that he was telling the truth. The risk-taking thing in me that I discovered when I took up skydiving was also in him. He saw it in me in the way I volunteered for difficult tasks that would have made me look foolish if I failed. I saw it him in his willingness to be deadly honest about everything regardless of how it made him look.  

The “personality disorder” cases were the next to catch on to my true ability. A cantankerous cuss named Toby Malone and his equally cantankerous friend Art Field gave me the same hard time they gave everyone. I won over Toby by being “a good student.” With Art I could be myself. I respected what they could do and they returned the favor.   

A Master Modeler named Enoch Lesar gave me a boost by giving me a free hand and praising what I did. Another Master Modeler named Frank DeBono enhanced my image by going toe to toe with me on a hood. He did one side; I did the other. I matched him stroke for stroke.  

I won some big points with a Master Modeler named Walt George who gave me a scan drawing to put in a wheel opening. The drawing was so horrible that I thought it was a joke and I told him so. He assured me that it was no joke. I straightened out the mess. In the process I gained more respect than I realized.  

My image as a clay modeler improved again when I found a flaw in a mechanical drawing that the engineers and draftsmen thought that none o the modelers would detect. It improved once more in an unexpected way when the first female modeler came into the studio…. 

Dianne Flint was a young, attractive and flirtations brunette. She also had a good art background, natural talent and a deceptively good work ethic. Some of the modelers tripped over themselves to help her with anything they could conceive of. Dianne ate it up. That was her mistake. 

When a modeler did her work for her, she smiled happily – and watched. Most of the other modelers saw only the part where she let someone else do her work. They never saw what she learned from watching them do it. They smirked when John Cecil put her on a particularly hard or messy assignment by herself or with a modeler like me who made sure that she did her own work. They did not see how happily she tore into those jobs. Everything was new and exciting to her. 

Dianne’s approach to a job was different from the men. Her learning style and sensibilities were different. She had more trouble with some things than most men would have had and she did some things with more ease. She didn’t have to use her muscles as much as most men did in some situations because she used her brain more.   Only a few of us saw how quickly she was becoming quite good at her work.  

Now that we had a woman in the studio, the men had to be more careful about the pictures they displayed, the language they used and the jokes they told. Dianne couldn’t have cared less. The men still felt the pressure. Like their counterparts at Chrysler, they resented the idea of a woman doing “a man’s job.” With the men at Chrysler in ‘68 it was a hypothetical situation. With the men at Ford in ’77 it was a reality. 

A Master Modeler named John Amarozi, assigned Dianne and me to model blisters over the wheels in the bed of a pickup truck. Some of the task was more than a little tricky so I had to apply a few tricks I learned at Chrysler in setting it up to be sure I could bring it home. I did mine and showed Dianne what she didn’t already know to do hers. She did hers. She did every bit of it herself. Passing modelers commented on how well both blisters were done – and gave me all of the credit. Telling them the truth did no good. They were convinced that a woman couldn’t have done what Dianne did so the harder I tried to convince them otherwise the more certain they became that I was trying to give her credit for my work. So now they saw me not only as a good modeler but a good guy. 

On the streets of Dearborn my image was the same as any black man’s. 

When my car died, my sister, who worked in another building drove me to work. With my 12-hour workday, getting home wasn’t so easy until I found someone in the Design Center who lived close to me. Meanwhile, I walked a few short blocks to Michigan Ave. to catch a bus to Detroit.  

I was standing alone under the bus stop sign when a Dearborn police car pulled up next me. The cop on the passenger side asked me what I was doing there. I told him I was waiting for a bus. He asked me where I was going. I told him I was going home. He asked me where I was coming from. I told him that I was coming from work. He asked me where I worked. I told him that I worked in the Design Center. He asked me what I did there. I told him that I modeled clay model cars. He asked to see my driver’s license and my Design Center badge. I gave them to him. He told me to get in the back of the police car. I did.  

A few minutes later I was sitting on a bench in a small police station while the desk sergeant shuffled paper and one of the cops that picked me up started making phone calls. His partner drank a cup of coffee while chatting with a black prisoner down the hall in a lock-up. They spoke as though they knew each other. Everything was very friendly. The police were extremely polite. When the cop on the phone finished his calls, he returned my driver’s license and my badge. He and his partner drove me home. I thanked them for the ride. They thanked me for my cooperation and drove away. I walked to my door seething in rage….  

Somewhere around my sixth month in the Truck studio John Cecil called me into his office and told how pleased he was with me. He gave me his highest performance review rating of Excellent. With that rating came the highest merit increase he could give me of 9%.  It’s hard to argue with an increase like that. I told him anyway that he could have gotten me more with an O. That’s when he told me about his PR philosophy and the “slug” reputation of the Truck studio. He said that he thought at first that Personnel sent me there because they thought I was a slug but he could see that I knew my stuff. I was beginning to suspect that Metric sent me there because he knew John’s PR philosophy.

In November, John picked Art Field, a Sculptor who should have been a Master Modeler, to accompany a stylish clay model pickup truck to Minnesota for a survey. Art was asked to lead a team of three modelers, including him. He picked Al Sanson and me. Gary Kubitsky had been there earlier in an advanced party. He told us what to expect. 

When we got to the survey site, we saw that the clay model was badly cracked and banged up. Al got angry with me for complaining about it. He held his temper for a long time then unloaded on me, telling me that I was being “negative.” Art saw what I was talking about. I was talking about the transport procedure that allowed the clay to be damaged so badly. While Al was focused on repairing the model I was focused on repairing the problem. We were going to have to fix the model anyway. 

Al didn’t understand my complaints or hear my ideas about eliminating them in the transport procedure until he saw firsthand how I worked. He thought I was just bitching when there was work to be done. In the next few days he got a better idea of how my mind worked and I got a better idea of how his mind worked. Art had a good handle on both us, which is why he picked us. We made an incomparable team. That kind of insight and management of human resources is why Art Field should have been a Master Modeler.  

We didn’t have the facilities that we needed to do everything so we improvised like crazy. Art and I excelled at that. Al’s greatest strength was in his drive. He was a reformed motorcycle bum who took his reformation to extremes. He worked extra hard and well all the time.  

When we finished, the model looked so good that some of the locals that Ford invited to critique it tried to open the doors when they thought nobody was looking. The “door cuts” were actually thin strips of black masking tape sprinkled lightly with the truck’s body color to give it the appearance of depth. A survey guest in the first group stayed behind when the others left. He looked around, step through the velvet ropes and grab the clay handle. He destroyed the handle and part of the door pocket to boot. When he saw what he did, he fled in panic.  

Art, Al and I watched this through a small slit in the curtain hiding our supplies and equipment. After a man in the next group lagged behind and tried to open the door we stopped frosting the “cut line” tape and left the end of it hanging near the handle. People still tried to open the door.  

We wised up, carved the handles out of wood and made them easy to pull off without damaging the clay. That only made it easier to break the wooden trigger hot-glued inside the handle. It was a small piece that dropped to the floor when it broke off. Then people – honest Joe and Jane Average would look around, pick up the trigger and take off with it. Every group of a dozen or so had at least one trigger thief. 

At first it ticked us off. Then it got funny. It happened with such regularity that we made a game of guessing who then next trigger thief would be seeing how fast we could make new triggers between shows. When the game got boring Art made up a bunch of triggers in advance.  

On that survey trip I met Jack Telnack, a tall, thin Director on a fast track to the top. We hit it off right away. We talked a little about the unnecessary problems our modeling team encountered and some easy fixes for future surveys. We talked a lot about the antics of the people being surveyed as well as the valuable feedback they gave to Jack. 

The most valuable thing Jack learned was that it was a mistake to make a pickup truck too “pretty.” The people we surveyed wanted something that looked like the trucks they were used to, something they wouldn’t be afraid to ding or scratch up a little on hunting trips in the deep woods. The most valuable thing the modelers learned never reached Jack’s ears.

After Jack left a man approached Art Field and I with a windshield washer system that he’d done everything he could do to sell to the auto companies. He had no success. He took us to his Ford truck for a demonstration. His windshield was covered with a dirty, gray film. Instead of being momentarily blinded by the cleaning spray when Art turned on the windshield wiper, the blade cleared several wide swaths with the first pass and cleared the entire windshield with the second pass.  

Art and I were ecstatic. Art knew that our Studio Executive John Najar was deeply involved with Ford engineers in developing a better windshield washer system for our entire line of cars and trucks. When we got back to Dearborn, Art showed Najar the Minnesota inventor’s brochure and told him about the demonstration. I tried to back him up. Najar dismissed both of us. He said that his team had developed a better system. It’s been a quarter of a century now and I haven’t seen it yet….

I don’t know when my Manager Jim McBain changed his mind about me but I remember the day he told me that he thought I would be Ford’s first black Master Modeler. Earlier that day John Amarozi told me why many of the modelers chuckled when Dave Davison walked in the room and Mike Aloe, Roger Dowey or John O’Connor yelled, “River!” It was the day I learned why they looked at me with wide grins when they said it. I knew that it was an inside joke and Dianne was in on it because she once yelled it and smiled at me. Frank DeBono just smiled. Dave Davison was part Native-American. In the summer he fished in a river and his skin turned quite dark. His nickname in the Truck studio was River Nigger.