I happened to be in an area over the weekend that was having a very large craft show. There was a craftsman selling hand-made hinges and other iron or steel items. Needing some gate hinges for my back yard, it seemed like a good place to shop for them. The booth had several styles and sizes available and they all looked very nice. The price for the hinges was more than the gate I was going to hang with them, which got me to thinking about blacksmith shops when I was growing up.
I imagine there was probably a shop in Fort Gay or at least very near. I am sure that Bill Wellman or Fred Reid could address that. In many instances blackamith shops were scattered around communities and the smithy was not necessarily a full-time job for the owner.
The farm on which I was raised had a neighboring farm on which there was a shop and a smithy. He was a farmer, part-time preacher, and a part-time smithy. As a matter of fact, he at one time pastored the Fort Gay Baptist Church. I imagine looking into that red-hot forge fire reminded him enough of hell that he was motivated to preach his sermons with much greater zeal. It was great fun as a child to be allowed to turn the handle that fanned the fire in the forge, or turn the handle that turned the grindstone, or to watch and hear the steam that arose when he stuck a hot piece of metal into a bucket of water to cool it off so that it could be handled safely.
The shop was a simple place with no power tools. This was before REA. Usually there would be a forge, an anvil or two, some tongs for handling hot items, a few hammers of different sizes, punches, chisels, a grindstone wheel, and a few other assorted tools. It was a place where you would take a farm implement that was broken to have a piece fashioned to repair it, or perhaps to fashion some gate hinges from an odd piece of metal that you might have lying around. The most important function it served though was to shoe the horses.
Our farm, as were most of that era, had only horses to power the farm implements used in planting, cultivating, and harvesting the farm crops. As I recall, we would have the horses shod twice each year. Once in the spring and again in the fall in preparation for winter. Being your sole source of power for farming, it was a high priority to take care of their feet. Most hardware and other stores at that time sold horse shoes. It seems that somewhere in my memory I sort of remember that Mate Thompson’s store in Fort Gay sold them, but I could be wrong.
Usually this shop would put the shoes on the horses on a Saturday and there would be several there on that day to avail themselves of this service. It was sort or a neighborhood social event. The kids, such am myself, would sit enraptured, listening to the stories the adults would tell. Some of them had served in World War 1 and it was exciting to hear about the far off places they had been and the things they had done. I often wondered how the horse felt about having his hooves trimmed and nails driven in to hold the shoes in place.
Living in horse country, we see a lot of farriers driving their trucks with equipment around to the horse farms or the race tracks doing the job that the old blacksmith did many years ago. Of course the shoes are much different today and the animals they work with worth considerable more money that the big Belgian or other breeds of work horse of that time. I think some of my favorite commercials are the Budweiser horses with their huge hooves that are a reminder of that time when these type horses powered the farm.
We had a large barn with a center passageway that ran the length of it. This was a place where neighbors would gather on a rainy Saturday to await the arrival of the rural mail carrier and play a game of horseshoes. There were always several worn horseshoes lying around the barn that could be used. We would also have mule shoes and usually they were a bit smaller and lighter than horse shoes so this allowed the kids to compete on an even basis with the adults.
Those times were truly the end of a simpler, gentler way of life.
All of this reminds me of oft told story of the young boy who was watching the smithy fashion a horse shoe. He removed the shoe from the fire and after shaping it laid it on the ground to cool. The young boy, thinking it was cool, picked it up and immediately threw it down. The smithy, being a bit of a practical joker, said to the boy; “Burn your self sonny?” The boy, being a bit embarrassed by the whole thing replied: “No sir, it just don’t take me long to look at horseshoes.”
The Viking Chronicles 