How a thirteen-year-old boy followed his imagination and just started
Too often I get caught up in overpreparing, waiting until everything is ready, until I have time scheduled, before I start a project. Guided less by wide eyed wonder and more by the weight of a full schedule and financial responsibilities. Kids don’t operate that way. They follow their imagination. They jump without looking. Looking back, I can see that’s how my blacksmithing journey began. Just a wide-eyed boy eager to make his own path.
The following is an excerpt from my personal memoirs about the day I let imagination lead the way.
2001 was a big year for me. I turned thirteen that January. My baby brother was born just three weeks later. My family moved to a new home. And like most Americans, we weathered the trauma of 9/11 as best as we knew how. For the first time in a long time, the TV came out of the closet, and I sat glued to ABC News with Peter Jennings, watching the world change.
Virginia’s September weather is as unpredictable as a coin toss. The oppressive summer heat bleeds into the first cool days of early fall, as valley folk clean up their gardens and prepare for deer season. Fair week has come and gone, and harvest celebrations begin. The Edinburg Ole’ Time Festival, beloved for decades in the Valley, was a favorite destination for my family. Crafters, businesses, and food vendors line Stoney Creek Road and Main Street, each vying for attention. We liked to park behind the bank, there always seemed to be a spot there, and we didn’t have to walk far. The highlight of the festival was the rubber duck race. You could purchase a duck for a dollar, and that duck’s number was assigned to you. At noon, barrels of bright yellow rubber ducks were dumped into the creek on one side of the bridge on Main Street. Crowds watched as the ducks floated downstream. Many would get stuck on rocks or spin in the current, looking like they’d never make it to the end. At the end, a big net stretched across the creek. The first duck to reach it was the winner. As much as I loved watching the duck race, that year I got distracted.
Blacksmith Bill Moss was a large man. Well over six feet tall and likely three hundred pounds, he towered over his hammer and anvil as he forged hot iron for festivalgoers. His forge sat beneath the largest oak tree next to Stoney Creek Mill, providing valuable shade for such a hot job, even in the cool of October. His blue overall straps framed his chest and massive arms. I knew what a blacksmith was, but only from books and films. Bill made heavy butcher blocks with iron wine racks fastened underneath. He had cooking tools, spoons and ladles, and all kinds of plant hangers and garden decorations. The sulfuric smell of coal smoke permeated the fall air.
My dad walked up behind me. “Whatcha doin’, son?” “I want to learn blacksmithing!” I said. “But I thought you wanted to carve. Don’t you want to carve wooden spoons like your dad does?” He watched for a minute, then walked away. I was fixated, like a moth to a porch light. Bill handed me his business card and said that if I wanted to learn, I could call him anytime with questions.
The following few months of 2001, I was fully absorbed in the idea of learning blacksmithing. I began to dream of what it would be like to be six feet tall and three hundred pounds, swinging a hammer all day while the muscles on my arms grew bigger. I was thirteen, after all. I pulled my old, outgrown overalls out of the closet. Even when I adjusted the straps all the way, they still gave me a wedgie, and the cuffs exposed my socks, but I wore them anyway. His overalls had a small American flag on the chest. “Liberty Bibs,” they said. I wished mine were Liberty Bibs. I asked for a pair for Christmas.
Thursdays were library days, and I spent the last few weeks of the year searching for any book I could find on blacksmithing, even requesting some from other libraries. My hunger to learn was insatiable. I started combing classified ads for tools and found an auction listing blacksmith equipment, more importantly, a forge. I begged my dad to take me. He still seemed a little sad that my interest had shifted from carving to metalwork. I told him I wanted to learn my own trade, not his, and that I could always come back to carving later. He took me.
A hammer was easy to come by; my dad had a bucket full of them in the shed. That left an anvil and a forge. I knew I couldn’t leave that auction without one. My dad and I whispered about what the bigger forge might be worth. I stamped my feet against the gravel lot to warm my toes. We settled somewhere around $100. I told him he better go to $120, just in case the other guy thought the same thing. The forge had a large cast iron table with pipe legs, worn to jagged points from years of being dragged across the ground. It came with a large blower. It was the complete package. As the auctioneer sang and the bids passed $100, then $120, my heart sank. Where else would I find another one? “$125! $135!” Caught up in the moment, my hand shot up in the air. “$140. Sold! To the young man in the bib overalls!”
Behind my parents’ house stood a big wild cherry tree. Not the kind you plant, just the kind that grows along fence rows and field edges in the Valley. I don’t think it was planted there. It was likely spared when the house was built, left for the shade it provided. Under that tree, you would often find me sitting on a five-gallon bucket, adjusting my bicycle hand brakes or oiling the chain with WD-40. I had worn a dirt circle onto the ground, oil stains, metal shavings, wood chips, and half-finished projects scattered everywhere. I shot marbles there. Practiced primitive fire-starting. Lifted weights. A rope swing hung high in the tree, and I’d climb it using only my hands for exercise. I could sit there for hours, until my mom called out at 5:30: “Andy Griffith is on!”
Channel 3 played reruns every evening before the six o’clock news, and we watched them religiously. I’d drop everything, run inside, and wash the grease and WD-40 off my hands and elbows so she’d let me sit on the couch.
Under this tree is where I set up my first workshop. My dad never threw anything out, and we scrounged up an old motor to run the blower. Over the forge, I stretched a cheap blue tarp and pulled it down to the ground to keep the rain off until I could build something better. I couldn’t sleep the first night after bringing the forge home. I was too eager to start. The problem was, I didn’t have an anvil. In my dad’s shed atop a 5-gallon bucket sat my grandfather’s old machinist vise, so heavy it had broken through the lid. It would do, for now. I buried a locust log from our firewood pile in the ground for a base, cut it to height with a chainsaw, and bolted the vise to the top. There was a flat spot on the back that would work well enough to hammer on. A trash bag kept the rain off. I was ready to forge.
I didn’t realize it then, but I didn’t over plan. I jumped in headfirst. With little more than a dirt circle under a cherry tree and a secondhand forge I followed my imagination and just started.
