Fred Glassford may be gone but his story lives on

By Lisa Carolin

Tattle Tales and Tinker Toys is a book about the colorful life of Fred Glassford, and his experiences growing up in Michigan through the 20th Century. It’s his story of overcoming obstacles through hard work and perseverance, and it’s a story of his experience in the car business, specifically selling cars.

It’s a book that began as a series of Glassford’s stories about his life that his daughter Sharon Raschke lovingly, thoughtfully, and determinedly organized and put together into a memoir.

She says his title – Tattle Tales and Tinker Toys – refers to tattling on the car business.

Glassford passed away on Sept. 9 at the age of 92, but not before he saw his book come to fruition. He sold it one copy at a time, approaching strangers, who became not only book buyers but often friends.

“He wrote all the stories up to the Afterward, and I wrote the Afterward,” said Raschke, whose full-time job is as Dexter Community Schools’ Chief Financial Officer. “He cautioned me not to make it for ‘educated people.’ My challenge was keeping it in dad’s words.”

Raschke says that she felt an obligation to validate the things that people wouldn’t otherwise know about her dad, such as him being the number one Ford Motor Car salesman in the world in 1955.

“I did not know my dad until I wrote this book,” said Raschke. “My dad was an introvert with his family and an extrovert with people one-on-one. When I was growing up, he was never around. He was working all the time or at the gun club, skeet shooting and trap shooting.”

Fred Glassford’s father was a hobo, and he spent his early years in his dad’s blind pig, located in Detroit’s Cass Corridor. The family moved to Northern Michigan where they lived in a chicken coop for 10 years.

Glassford joined the Lake Superior Civilian Conservation Corps in 1938 when he was 15 years old. Then in 1943, he joined the Navy and became a Motor Machinist Mate. That was all life experience that helped prepare him for the work force where he worked in a variety of automotive garages in Detroit and eventually as a salesman in a Ford showroom.

He called himself “Fred Ford” and left “Wouldjatakes” on people’s cars (strips of paper with the questions, “Would you accept $___ for this car on a new Ford?” Glassford invited recipients of the tags to the dealership to ask for him.

After years as a successful car salesman, he found himself in prison in the early 1970s and spent a year-and-a-half in a combination of Jackson Prison, Camp Waterloo, and Camp Brighton.

“His side of the story is that Ford Motor Company used unscrupulous tactics, and he ended up with a dealership that was six times bankrupt,” said Raschke. “He began writing his book when he was in prison because he wanted to tell his side of the story. I had no awareness he was in prison until I wrote this book.”

Raschke says that her dad never felt his imprisonment was justified and believed it was an act of vengeance by Ford Motor Company.

The family knew for a long time that the manuscript existed, but it wasn’t until Raschke’s daughter Christie “Cricket” Donahue started organizing the manuscript that the stories came out and the project began.

Glassford’s dream was that it would become a book.

In her eulogy at her grandfather’s funeral, Cricket said, “Meeting many of his friends recently and through the years, it’s become clear that his enthusiasm, humor, and wisdom earned him the respect of so many people, making anyone he talked to instantly feel like the most important person in the world. That’s probably his most effective, unpublished sales tactic. He made friends easily.”

To purchase a copy of Tattle Tales and Tinker Toys, email Raschke at [email protected], or call her at 810-923-3767 or write to P.O. Box 103, Whitmore Lake, MI 48189.