Seeing the Future from the Past

By Ferd Groner, Metropolitan Printers Co., 1944, 214 pages
Reviewed by Ken Bilderback, November 8, 2021

What, you might ask, did rich white men have to complain about 100 years ago? Apparently all of the same things rich white men complain about today. Taxes, poor people, Black people, inferior luxury automobiles, that sort of thing.

Ferd Groner. Sounds like the name of Saturday Night Live’s Debbie Downer’s boyfriend, doesn’t it? At least it does to me after reading his book, Seeing The Future From The Past.

Old Ferd was a prominent local businessperson (look him up; a nearby Hillsboro, Ore., elementary school still bears his name). He made a fortune in walnuts and wrote an autobiography that was required reading in the district for several years.

Old Ferd traveled the country and the world and found fault nearly everywhere, although he did seem to have a kinship with his homeland of Germany.

For example, Ferd visited Algeria and his takeaway lesson was to not help beggars. Ferd visited Alabama and his takeaway lesson was that “the whites were as bad as the negroes.” Coming from Ferd, that was in-your-face smack talk.

Ferd took the train to Indiana in 1911 to pick up his custom Stutz Bearcat and it wasn’t up to his standards, so we read a lot about his victimization as he toured the country with it. Then we read about his hatred for the New Deal because families were using proceeds from the Civilian Conservation Corps and National Recovery Act to buy Fords.

It’s a perfect Halloween book because it’s filled with one horror after another.

I hope that it’s not like seeing the future from the past. But it probably is.

Ed. note: This title is out of print. At the time of the review, on copy was found at Rose City Books. If that copy is no longer available, search used-book stores -- it's not an easy title to find.