Read Online Stress by Loren D. Estleman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Loren D. Estleman
Tags: Historical
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Josephine from Napoleon to commemorate their betrothal.
Following a party in celebration of the return of the master and mistress from abroad—attended by the Henry and Edsel Fords, the Horace Dodges, the Walter P. Chryslers, the Pierre DuPonts, and deaf old Thomas Edison in his rumpled evening clothes with stubby yellow pencils poking out of the vest pocket—The Oaks featured prominently in Harper’s , The Literary Digest , and newspaper rotogravure sections throughout the country. Like Hollywood’s Pickfair and the Astor House in New York, the mansion with its seventeen bedrooms, two kitchens, and tiled ballroom became a set piece for the New Gilded Age and the place to stop for persons of note on their way between coasts. Charlie Chaplin stayed there while researching Modern Times. Herbert Hoover, resting during his whistle-stop campaign for the 1928 Republican presidential nomination, shot pool in the game room with Harlan and discussed the stock market. Johnny Weismuller swam in the Olympic-size pool. All through Prohibition the champagne gushed from the stock in the cellar while the grace and charm of Cornelia Crownover contributed to the inebriation of the guests and softened the regret of the morning after.
With Repeal came Depression. Retrenching after his 1929 losses on Wall Street, Harlan slashed wages and increased hours at his plants in Detroit, Dearborn, and along the river. When the fledgling American Federation of Labor and United Auto Workers hit the bricks, Crownover Coaches locked them out, replacing the strikers with non-union labor. Picketers assaulted the scabs on their way through the gates and punctured the radiators of trucks carrying coiled steel and hardwood planks to the loading docks. Pinkerton detectives waded into human seas with truncheons, splintering wrists and staving in skulls. Retired bootleggers struck back with brass knuckles and blackjacks. A Lewis gun mounted on a tripod fired orange tracers into a crowd blockading the assembly plant in Wyandotte. A Remington rifle resting on the hood of a Packard snatched a security officer out from under his cap at the foundry on East Jefferson.
In 1938, pressured by his directors and the threat of a federal investigation, Harlan Crownover signed a three-year contract with the union guaranteeing wages and overtime pay. Sixty-five now, embittered in spirit and his eyesight failing, he lapsed into semi-retirement, placing the company’s day-to-day operation in the hands of his closest confederate, a former Wunderkind he had hired after his father’s ouster to oversee the transition from carriages to convertibles.
His wife had other plans. Four years after finishing The Oaks and crowding it with treasures, she had found the house strangely empty. What was needed, she had decided, was to fill its stately rooms with the laughter of children. In the fall of 1926 the Crownovers had adopted a nine-month-old boy whom they named Abner IV. Two years later an infant girl, Caryn, had joined the household. From an early age the daughter received lessons in ballet and the piano, while the son was drilled in the arts of responsibility and leadership. Only twelve and a half when his adopted father stepped down, young Abner was incapable of taking his place, but his mother was determined that when the time came he would not be overlooked.
Meanwhile the Wunderkind shone. A youthful and energetic fifty at the time of his promotion, Francis Brennan caught the scent of gunpowder from the east that summer before the invasion of Austria and went to bat lobbying for defense contracts in Washington. The news that Henry Ford had gotten there first didn’t faze him. By Pearl Harbor he had completely overhauled the downriver plants and, subcontracting from Ford, set them to work around the clock, cranking out cockpits and bridges for the B-29 bombers and Liberty ships Henry was putting together at Willow Run and Rouge. On D-Day, thirty percent of the materiel pouring
Following a party in celebration of the return of the master and mistress from abroad—attended by the Henry and Edsel Fords, the Horace Dodges, the Walter P. Chryslers, the Pierre DuPonts, and deaf old Thomas Edison in his rumpled evening clothes with stubby yellow pencils poking out of the vest pocket—The Oaks featured prominently in Harper’s , The Literary Digest , and newspaper rotogravure sections throughout the country. Like Hollywood’s Pickfair and the Astor House in New York, the mansion with its seventeen bedrooms, two kitchens, and tiled ballroom became a set piece for the New Gilded Age and the place to stop for persons of note on their way between coasts. Charlie Chaplin stayed there while researching Modern Times. Herbert Hoover, resting during his whistle-stop campaign for the 1928 Republican presidential nomination, shot pool in the game room with Harlan and discussed the stock market. Johnny Weismuller swam in the Olympic-size pool. All through Prohibition the champagne gushed from the stock in the cellar while the grace and charm of Cornelia Crownover contributed to the inebriation of the guests and softened the regret of the morning after.
With Repeal came Depression. Retrenching after his 1929 losses on Wall Street, Harlan slashed wages and increased hours at his plants in Detroit, Dearborn, and along the river. When the fledgling American Federation of Labor and United Auto Workers hit the bricks, Crownover Coaches locked them out, replacing the strikers with non-union labor. Picketers assaulted the scabs on their way through the gates and punctured the radiators of trucks carrying coiled steel and hardwood planks to the loading docks. Pinkerton detectives waded into human seas with truncheons, splintering wrists and staving in skulls. Retired bootleggers struck back with brass knuckles and blackjacks. A Lewis gun mounted on a tripod fired orange tracers into a crowd blockading the assembly plant in Wyandotte. A Remington rifle resting on the hood of a Packard snatched a security officer out from under his cap at the foundry on East Jefferson.
In 1938, pressured by his directors and the threat of a federal investigation, Harlan Crownover signed a three-year contract with the union guaranteeing wages and overtime pay. Sixty-five now, embittered in spirit and his eyesight failing, he lapsed into semi-retirement, placing the company’s day-to-day operation in the hands of his closest confederate, a former Wunderkind he had hired after his father’s ouster to oversee the transition from carriages to convertibles.
His wife had other plans. Four years after finishing The Oaks and crowding it with treasures, she had found the house strangely empty. What was needed, she had decided, was to fill its stately rooms with the laughter of children. In the fall of 1926 the Crownovers had adopted a nine-month-old boy whom they named Abner IV. Two years later an infant girl, Caryn, had joined the household. From an early age the daughter received lessons in ballet and the piano, while the son was drilled in the arts of responsibility and leadership. Only twelve and a half when his adopted father stepped down, young Abner was incapable of taking his place, but his mother was determined that when the time came he would not be overlooked.
Meanwhile the Wunderkind shone. A youthful and energetic fifty at the time of his promotion, Francis Brennan caught the scent of gunpowder from the east that summer before the invasion of Austria and went to bat lobbying for defense contracts in Washington. The news that Henry Ford had gotten there first didn’t faze him. By Pearl Harbor he had completely overhauled the downriver plants and, subcontracting from Ford, set them to work around the clock, cranking out cockpits and bridges for the B-29 bombers and Liberty ships Henry was putting together at Willow Run and Rouge. On D-Day, thirty percent of the materiel pouring
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