ATDTDA (5): The American Corporation

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          Robin:
          Fleetwood Vibe, our classically satirical 
          untrustworthy narrator,is clearly a target 
          of justified scorn, someone who is in the 
          book as arepresentative of unearned 
          inherited wealth, wealth that was stolen 
          in the first place.

          rich:
          you mean like Fleetwood Mac?  ;)
          do prefer the Peter Green days over rumors anyday

          Bekah:
          Early Fleetwood  Cad.

          http://store.pastpresent.com/caauflvadfr1.html

Of course, the Cadillac Fleetwood is a fine representative of the luxury 
automobile, the sort of transportation available to the well heeled. The 
Fleetwood company began as an independent company producing 
automobile bodies smack dab in the middle of AtD's timeline:

          When the bicycle bubble burst in 1902, Urich took a 
          job with the Fleetwood Foundry & Machine Company 
          in nearby Fleetwood, PA, in 1902. A 1904 fire 
          destroyed all but one of the company’s buildings and 
          it was in that remaining structure that Hartman and 
          Johnson, the foundry’s owners, founded the Reading 
          Metal Body Company in 1905 to manufacture 
          automobile bodies for the areas burgeoning 
          automobile industry. Urich was appointed treasurer 
          of the new firm.

          Reading built bodies for Chadwick, Duryea, Garford 
          and other early automobile manufacturers and 
          employed 125 hands. Apparently Garford was so 
          pleased with their work that they purchased the 
          company in 1909 and relocated it to their 
          hometown of Elyria, Ohio.

          Now out of a job, Urich got together with some 
          friends and former Reading employees and 
          founded the Fleetwood Metal Body Co. Located 
          in the E.M. Hill’s former Fleetwood Planing Mill, 
          Fleetwood’s officers and stockholders were as 
          follows: Harry C. Urich, President & General 
          Manager; Nicholas J. Kutz, Secretary; and 
          Alfred Schlegel, Treasurer. George J. Schlegel 
          and Jacob Kern filled the two remaining seats 
          on the five-member board of directors and 
          Stephen Golubics and Ellsworth P. Urich were 
          listed as shareholders.

          Although the young firm started out with 5,000 
          sq ft. of the planing mill, another 5,000 was 
          acquired during 1909. In 1910 another 10,000 
          sq. ft. were added for a total of 20,000 sq. ft. 
          In 1912 they moved into the former Reading 
          Body Plant, purchasing it 2 years later. A 
          devastating fire leveled the building on June 
          5, 1917, but was replaced with purpose-built 
          4-story 60,000 sq ft brick structure that would 
          eventually employ 375 hands. For many years, 
          Fleetwood residents recalled the sight of 
          automobile bodies crashing to the ground 
          level from the third floor final assembly area.

          By the end of 1919, the new plant could no 
          longer meet their needs and the factory had 
          enough orders on the books to keep it busy 
          well into 1921. . . .

          . . . .Andrew Carnegie, the Vanderbilts, the 
          Rockefellers have all been users of Fleetwood 
          cars while Mary Pickford, Theda Bara, Harold 
          Lockwood, Andrew Pierson and other shining 
          lights of motion picturedom have been loud in 
          their praise of the lines and the finish of the cars 
          built especially for them. Their product has been 
          sent to every part of the world including California, 
          South America and Europe. . . .

http://www.coachbuilt.com/bui/f/fleetwood/fleetwood.htm

Can't help but re-post Proust's thought's on how the 
Automobile altered the local space/time continuum:

          Marcel Proust, Sodom et Gomorrhe 
          Translated from the French by C. K. Scott Moncrieff
          eBook No.:  0300491.txt

          Distances are only the relation of space to 
          time and vary with that relation. We 
          express the difficulty that we have in 
          getting to a place in a system of miles or 
          kilometres which becomes false as soon 
          as that difficulty decreases. Art is modified 
          by it also, when a village which seemed to 
          be in a different world from some other 
          village becomes its neighbour in a landscape 
          whose dimensions are altered. In any case 
          the information that there may perhaps exist 
          a universe in which two and two make five 
          and the straight line is not the shortest way 
          between two points would have astonished 
          Albertine far less than to hear the driver say 
          that it was easy to go in a single afternoon 
          to Saint-Jeanand la Raspelière, Douville and 
          Quetteholme, Saint-Mars le Vieux and 
          Saint-Mars le Vêtu, Gourville and Old Balbec, 
          Tourville and Féterne, prisoners hitherto as 
          hermetically confined in the cells of distinct
          days as long ago were Méséglise and 
          Guermantes, upon which the same eyes could 
          not gaze in the course of one afternoon, 
          delivered now by the giant with the 
          seven-league boots, came and clustered 
          about our tea-time their towers and steeples, 
          their old gardens which the encroaching 
          wood sprang back to reveal.

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300491.txt

Note also how that song from Wilshire Vibe's show "African Antics" ends: 

          If you're trav'lin out tthat way,
          Listen up to, what I say,
          Don't wan-na be no-body's meal? bet-
          -ter bring along a real fast
          Automobile!