Page 306 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

But the life of the owner of a printing shop is strenuous. “Dad” Frailey’s boy
had finished college, and there seemed no reason why his father should
continue to work so hard. He sold his business, and became the shop
superintendent for the Twin City Printing Company. He owned his home and
had accumulated enough money to live comfortably. But he did not want ever
to forsake the smell of printer’s ink or the clang of the Gordon presses, as
strong a lure to the printer as the odor of the sawdust and the clop of horses’
hoofs, to the circus performer. He meant to go on working until his time on
earth had ended.

But there came a day when the owner of the business decided that he could
reduce expenses by putting a younger man in charge of the shop. “Dad”
Frailey was more than sixty. It was time for him to retire. “Too old to work
any longer, you ought to take things easier,” said the proprietor— words that
begin to haunt all men and women who have passed fifty, and words that
many thousands heard during the depression. So they were spoken to “Dad”
seven years ago in the front office of the Twin City Printing Company, and
he left that night, branded “too old to work.”

But there was something different between “Dad” Frailey and the majority of
men who face the same problem. He didn’t agree that he was too old, and he
didn’t intend to take things easy. He knew that the quickest way for him to
die would be to sit around doing nothing. That night there occurred a
directors’ meeting in the Frailey homestead. Mr. and Mrs. Frank L. Frailey
were the members present. “I’m going to start a little shop of my own right
here in this house,” said the president of the corporation. “I’ll buy some type,
a press, a cutter, and the other things I need—there are a lot of folks in these
two towns who know my work and like it. They’ll be glad to give me as
many jobs as I can handle. Now down in the basement—”

But that was when the meeting got warm. No woman wants a printing plant
in her basement—too much noise and confusion. So they finally
compromised on the little one-car garage which up to that moment had done
nothing more eventful than house several cars made and sold by another
elderly man who seems destined to keep on working—Henry Ford. And in
that brick garage—no bigger than a tourist’s cabin—“Dad” Frailey