Word: fords
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Matel Dawson has worked and sweated as a forklift driver in Dearborn, Mich., for nearly 60 years, often clocking 84 hours a week. He has spent scarcely anything on himself, preferring to invest heavily in the stock of his employer, Ford Motor Co. He could have been one of those millionaires next door you read so much about, living frugally while piling up money for a lavish retirement...
...years. He also once owned a pair of shiny Lincoln Continentals. But he gave up those things 23 years ago when he and his wife were divorced. Today he lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Highland Park, a gritty Detroit suburb. He drives a red 1985 Ford Escort that runs just fine, thank you--though neighborhood thieves have forced him to do without hubcaps...
Dawson rises at 4 most mornings, brews coffee and goes to work at Ford's Rouge Assembly Complex, which builds fuel tanks, engines and other auto parts. He relishes overtime pay and often works 12-hour shifts right through Saturday and Sunday. He has dinner at a modest local restaurant. While neighbors spend evenings tending lawns and cars, Dawson watches Hard Copy and is in bed by 8:30. His only vacations are occasional jaunts to Shreveport to meet recipients of the scholarships named in honor of his parents. His only real luxuries are the Burberry's suits he wears...
Fully half of Dawson's pay--about $24 an hour plus overtime--goes directly, by payroll deduction, into Ford's employee stock-purchase program. Since he began buying Ford stock in 1956, it has returned 13.7% a year on average, outpacing...
...funding for an American artist whose work is internationally known. This year's display is no different, with backing of about $1 million from government and private sources, including a $100,000 grant from the glitzy fashion house Gucci (and the requisite glamour of Gucci's creative director, Tom Ford, posing on several occasions with Hamilton as his bodyguards stood stonily by). These are the trappings of America's high-end art culture at the end of the century: spectacle is required. You go to the U.S. pavilion expecting a little extra wattage and buzz...