Poor
Johnson North started work for the Mississippi Bicycle Corporation
on 3 May 1910, his fifteenth birthday.
He worked a six day week,
7am until 5pm Monday to Friday, in a way he was lucky, he got to
knock off at 12:30 on Saturdays.He had a half hour lunch break
every day.
Times were hard, he had
Christmas day and New Years day off, and if they happened to fall
on a Sunday, well, that was just tough.
Johnson lived two miles 765
yards from work, he walked the same way every day at a pace of 4
miles per hour. He took the same route home too, but it took
him forty five minutes. On Tuesdays and Fridays, he would
call in for four half-pint glasses of beer (3.2% ABV) at his local
bar, but mainly to see the bar-keeper, Daisy. This slight
detour added 692 yards and two hours to his journey.
Johnson never married,
however there were rumours around the town that Daisy's son, also,
by one heck of a coincidence, called Johnson, was his son.
Johnson Junior died on 13 November 2004 (by yet another
coincidence, his birthday) aged 75.
When he started work, it
would take him five hours to fully assemble a bicycle, by the time
he was laid off on 1 June 1933, he could make a whole bicycle in 3
hours and 11 minutes. Such was his skill, the time it took
him to make a bicycle decreased by the same amount on every one he
made.
Johnson was more than a
little upset and went to Daisy's bar. Countless beers later,
staggering homeward, he was tragically killed in a motorcar
accident, he still had this in his pocket...
