People were buying Japanese cars because they thought they were better than American cars. That the Japanese had better production and better-quality control. But even the Japanese admitted that they had learned it from America. He could remember a time when nobody would even touch anything if it said "MADE IN JAPAN." That had changed because the Japanese people had made a commitment to changing it. They had worked hard. He had always made a point of reading about people who had started successful companies, about their beginnings. You learned how to be successful by studying successful people.

Soichiro Honda had started with a small repair shop in Hamamatsu in 1928 and built it up into a factory producing piston rings; a factory that was bombed to smithereens during the war. But he hadn't given up. After the war, he started up all over again, founding the Honda Technical Research Institute. It was an impressive sounding name, but the Institute had actually been only a wooden shed, measuring 18x12 feet. Honda had bought 500 army surplus engines, hired a few workers, and stuck the engines into bicycles. Connected them to the rear wheels with a drive belt. They ran on a mixture of gasoline and turpentine and smoked like a plugged-up chimney. Not much of a beginning but look where the Honda corporation was today and look at Chrysler, he thought, look at any company where the people really cared what they were doing and you'd see that you can turn anything around if you're willing to work at it.

Compared to some of those stories, a run down summer camp was a joke. But then, an 18x12 wooden shed that was supposed to be a Research Institute was a joke as well. Sure, he could have taken the easy way out. He could have put the place up for sale as rundown as it was and cut his losses as Alice had suggested. Alice simply didn't understand his dreams. She couldn't appreciate the long view. She didn't even understand the most basic elements of business. Lakefront property to her naturally meant it wasn't worthless.

Never mind that it was in a depressed area.

Never mind it was falling apart from neglect.

Never mind that it had been plagued by bad luck, starting with a boy drowning back in 1957 and two counselors being brutally murdered in 1958 and fires set by some arsonist the year after that and one thing after another ever since.