Greenfield Village

The bus which brought us back from the Rouge Factory Tour, dropped us near the gates of the Greenfield village. Greenfield village is the largest indoor-outdoor museum complex in the US. About a hundred historic buildings, starting from the seventeenth century have been re located here and most of them are manned by people who are dressed to suit the period and place. The idea is to exhibit how Americans have been living through the centuries.

It was past twelve noon when we entered the ‘village’. We blindly started walking along one of the streets and arrived at the Wright cycle Co.



Since I had not collected the information booklet at the gate, we did not know what to expect in the village and how to go about seeing it. But we knew that we were hungry and the first thing to do was to eat something. We sat on a bench in front of the Wright Cycle co and ate the lunch we had carried. Once the stomach was full, the mind worked better and limbs followed instructions. I decided to go back to the gate and get an information booklet. After that it was easy.

It was somewhat thrilling to be present in the shop in which the Wright brothers actually worked. Similar was the feeling when we went into Thomas Alva Edison’s lab, the very first house that had electric bulbs and many such exhibits.



We had no idea about the time required to see the whole thing. It looked as if we need not one but two full days to see everything leisurely and in detail. I kicked myself for not having visited the village earlier. It was easily accessible and we could have made two or more visits. Now we had to hurry. Still we made an entry and exit into all the exhibits like the court room where Abraham Lincoln practiced,




The garage where Henry ford built his first quadricycle,



Ford family house,etc etc



Veryclose to the house was the place from where we could go on a ride in a Model T, for five dollars. The car took us on a round of the village and the driver, a young college student, earning some money during vacations, pointed out all the important exhibits. I tried to trace back the route on foot and gave up after half an hour. By then it was nearing two in the afternoon and we were yet to visit the auto museum . We reluctantly came out of Green field village and headed towards the Ford Auto museum.