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GREENSBORO — For decades, Lynn Ford has worked beside the curve along Battleground Avenue.

Sit there long enough on any weekday morning, and you’re bound to hear someone come in and ask, “You still around here?’’

He is. Lynn started working full time at Ford Body Co. nearly a half-century ago. He first made truck bodies, later sold truck bodies and eventually oversaw the work on truck bodies on the company’s two big lots.

It’s just that he’s a Ford. And that’s their way.

His grandfather started the company in 1917. That’s Elbert Ray Ford. You see him on Lynn’s office wall, in a photo from February 1922. He’s in a bowler hat and three-piece suit, sitting at a roll-top desk. The desk is still there in the company office.

Then came Lynn’s father, Elbert Ray Ford Jr., “Cootabob’’ to his friends. He took over the company and later drove to New Mexico to persuade Lynn to come back home after his stint in the Army and join the family business.

That was 1962. Lynn came home with his young wife, Norma. Next month, they’ll celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

As Norma likes to say about her husband, “This company is in his blood.’’

Lynn used to leave from his grandparents’ house on Paul Street, pass their huge vegetable garden, and walk two minutes to Ford Body to sweep the sawdust off the floors. He was 10 and earned 50 cents a week.

He worked through his teenage summers, and after he graduated from Greensboro Senior High, Class of ’55, he knew one day he’d return and continue his family’s legacy.

He felt it was expected.

But today, Lynn is the last one. His son, Todd, is 44, a cargo pilot in Charlotte who has a family and career of his own. And Lynn knows his time near his grandfather’s roll-top desk is coming to an end.

He has several good years left. But at 73, Lynn wrestles with a tough question, “What’s next?’’

Ask him that, and he says he doesn’t know.

The tough economy is no help. Lynn has had to lay off seven of his 23 employees, and in the past two years, he’s seen his revenue fall 45 percent.

But he believes Ford Body can survive. So do his employees. The phone’s ringing, and business has started to trickle back in. And of course, there’s something to be said for longevity.

Ford Body has been around forever.

You sense that when you spot the anvil, near the metal shearing machine in the back of Ford’s huge shop. The anvil, anchored to a thick stump, came from Ford Body’s first shop, less than a block away on Grecade Street.

Back then, Grecade was a dirt road called Battleground. And back then, Ford Body made everything out of wood — buggies for Vick Chemical Co., school buses for Guilford County and garbage trucks for the city of Greensboro.

Today, everything is iron and steel. Flip through pages of Ford Body’s old photographs, and you see how Lynn’s family-run company became a brick in the foundation that undergirded Greensboro.

It built truck bodies for plumbers, bakers, grocers and furniture makers.

It built truck bodies for companies that sold soda, cleaned sheets and peddled milk.

It built truck bodies to tote books, haul groceries, carry horses and move families.

Ford Body helped buoy the muscle and intellectual power that made Greensboro. It’s old slogan: Ford’s Commercial Bodies “Deliver the Goods.’’

That’s why the question, “What’s next?’’ is so tough for Lynn.

“It’s everything,’’ Lynn says. “It’s been my life. It’s been my dream. It’s been my paycheck. I’d like to think that I’ve looked after my employees, and I kept a lot of guys on when I should’ve laid them off.’’

He sighs. Then, he continues.

“They’re more than just numbers to me. They’re your friends while you’re here, and you want them to have the best life that they can have, and the only way for them to do that is to have a job.’’

That mind-set made employees want to stick around. Clarence Lane started work in June 1947. He retired three years ago. And Fran Mabe started work in June 1967. He retired two years ago.

Mabe used to watch his young son Todd come in and become transfixed by a welder’s flying sparks. Todd is now 39, a married father, and he manages Ford Body’s parts department.

Today, Todd brings in his 3-year-old son, Christian. Christian loves to beep the horn and look at the big trucks.

These are moments in the lives of families Lynn knows firsthand. So, he keeps his family’s business going. And that keeps him going.

Ask Bonnie Powell. She’s Ford Body’s bookkeeper. She’s 63, and she’s been there 20 years in March.

“Have you ever watched Andy Griffith?’’ she asks. “It’s the episode where the milkman brings in a delivery truck, retires his horse and has Opie take care of his horse.

“The horse won’t eat, but it keeps backing up to the milk cart, and no one is hooking him up to the cart,’’ she says. “That’s a good analogy. Lynn’s done something so long he wants to continue.’’

Every weekday, right after sunrise, Lynn comes in and sits at a desk, with a golf-ball ashtray his father received long ago at his elbow. On a wood-panel wall six feet away is a framed contract from Oettinger Buggy Co. his grandfather received even longer ago.

The contract, dated 1906, promised Elbert Ray Ford $2 a day for 10 hours of work selling buggies.

Lynn sees that — and the roll-top desk in the next room and the anvil near the metal shearing machine in the shop — and he knows he’ll keep at it.

Even at age 73.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com