What I learned from reading The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip by Jeff Guinn.
Before Edison left, he had a suggestion.
The best part of the California trip had been the drive from Los Angeles to San Diego, free from any demands but their own whims.
While Edison didn't enjoy public appearances, he did savor time spent with friends, away from the crushing daily concerns at work.
Surely Ford and Firestone felt the same.
Why not embark on future car trips, picking a general area and route, and then going along as they pleased?
They could camp.
Perhaps John Burroughs would come along and point out all sorts of interesting plant life and birds, as had been the plan in 1914 during the aborted visit to the Everglades.
Henry Ford was immediately in favor, and besides recreation, the trips would suit business purposes, too.
The three men were pragmatic enough to realize that they couldn't go anywhere, particularly as a group, without attracting constant notice.
Their California adventures had just proven that newspapers couldn't get enough of Edison's and Ford's adventures.
Everywhere else in the country, reporters would vie for an opportunity to write about local visits, and thanks to the recent development of wire services, their stories would appear in newspapers all over the US.
Edison and Ford and Firestone gave themselves a nickname.
They would be the vagabonds, annually joining much of the rest of America exploring the country by car.
What better way for such rich, famous men to demonstrate their kinship with ordinary Americans?
We are really just like you.
Their main goal was to have a good time.
But few business magnates in America had a shrewder understanding of marketing than Edison, Ford, and Firestone.
If rank and file consumers like what they saw and read about, as they surely would, then sales of cars and light bulbs and phonographs and tires would directly benefit, too.
All right, so that excerpt is explaining the why behind the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is the vagabonds, the story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's ten year road trip.
And it was written by Jeff Gwinn.