He went into partnership with a man named Rogers, and together they dreamed up a series of luxury accessories for the interior of the car. Everyone else at that time was offering mechanical gadgets, considerations of comfort and beauty being largely neglected. So a vast field was open for such an enterprise.

Parke and Rogers decided to set up their shop in Caxton, both because it was Parke’s home and because Negro labor would be cheap. They began to produce arm rests, cloth steering-wheel covers, and several other items. A Farragut bank financed them during this period. Then they began a heavy advertising campaign, and soon the business was flourishing.

As it flourished, the shop grew and, shortly before the decline of the Model T, Parke bought out his partner and built the fabric mill.

There was a trying period of readjustment to the new economy, but whenever his items became obsolete, Parke would invent others.

He spent small fortunes, but invariably made them back; and, at seventy-eight, he signed a long-term contract with one of the nation’s largest automotive corporations, to supply accessories for all the cars to come out of their state factory.

They converted to plastics and, in 1949, the Shipman Mill added a second story.

Then Parke Shipman died, of a fistula, and his son was left to carry on.

Only, of course, there was nothing to “carry on.” The contract was a long one, the orders were filled on time with great ease, the profits were sufficiently large so that an increase would only compound the tax problem. Had he the financier’s interest in money for its own sake, Verne might have enlarged facilities, lobbied for new contracts, built the business into a colossal enterprise; but he knew that this involved tremendous work, work that was meaningless without the passion for business and the business world to carry it along.

Coming up from nothing, that was different; but adding frosting to an already over-rich cake—no. Two million in escrow and a regular $100,000 per year was enough.

It had occurred to Verne, when he was young, to change his name and strike out alone for Alaska or similarly virgin territory, to remain silent for a few years and then return with a fortune to match his father’s—he’d dream this dream every night—but somehow he never got around to doing it. At the age of twenty-two he went to Europe and stayed there for a while, long enough to fall in love with an English girl and marry her; but it scared him, and, when they were home again, the girl scared him, too. The marriage lasted six months, then the girl said she wanted a divorce and would settle for two hundred thousand.