My boyhood blacksmith
By Tom Poland
Here’s a tale of a horseshoe that cracked yours truly in the head, a tale that began near a handsome old shack. Cap Dunn, a blacksmith, lived there. Cap’s blacksmith shop stood near a big oak that looked like it could be 300 years old. Inside it was dark and the coals glowed red-yellow. Cap hammered molten metal into shape in that small shop, long gone now.
I’d hear Cap’s anvil ringing in my boyhood days, and I’d venture across the Augusta Highway to watch him hammer iron.
The sparks would fly and the metal would ring. He’d plunge red-hot iron into a bucket of water and steam would rise with a mighty hiss. You could hear him hammering clear across the highway through the pines at a place I still call home. His hammering had rhythm … he was striking blows with precision and purpose. It was just a hop, skip and a jump to Cap’s place. Often I went up there and one day I asked him a favor. “Would you make me a set of horseshoes?”
He did. It was my first set and I loved those flat, lightweight shoes. They were nothing like the thick, heavy professional sets. No, Cap fashioned me a set of shoes from scrap metal. Didn’t charge me a cent. Old Cap didn’t know it at the time, but he was saving me a lot of grief when he hammered out that thin set of shoes.
Dad gave me two iron stakes from his shop and I was in business. I made a horseshoe pit out in what we call the football field, an expanse of grass with two pines at one end that made a makeshift field goal when we hung a pole across them.
Whenever I could, I’d get some fellows together to play football there back when those pines were skinny, nothing like the big pines they are today. Outside of some roll the bat and football, we mostly played horseshoes there.
Many a day a boyhood friend, Thomas Pearce, would ride his bike to my place to play horseshoes. We played a lot, though I have no memory of who won most games. I know, however, who threw the most powerful shoe.
That would be my sister, Brenda. One day she and I were playing a spirited game. We would toss our shoes, and walk down to the other stake to see who got points. That’s how singles go. Then a fateful moment arrived.
A shoe slipped from Brenda’s hand and ended up halfway between the stakes. I walked on down to pick up my shoes. Not Brenda, without looking she picked up the errant shoe and slung it again. Had you been there you would have heard a clunk ring out.
Now had that been one of today’s regulation shoes I might have ended up in the hospital. I didn’t even need stitches, fortunately. Brenda was sorry, of course, but that did little to stop the bleeding. Looking back, I owe her thanks. A knock in the head can do some good. I do believe that.
Maybe we need to put horseshoe pits all over the place. Let a few errant throws do their magic. But, and this is vital, we need old lightweight horseshoes made by a blacksmith like Cap Dunn. Those big heavy ones could send a soul to the next level.
Old oaks, crumbling homes, blacksmiths and how kids amused themselves. …. Once again you’ve caught me walking down memory lane, and again I realize how lucky I was to grow up when we played outdoors, rather than sit inside with a digital device in our hand.
How many kids today can say they live near a blacksmith?
None, I’d wager. Nary a one. Today when I look over where my boyhood blacksmith lived, I don’t see an old shack collapsing into the earth. I see a boyhood spent in the presence of a man who’s a rarity today, an honest-to-goodness blacksmith, one who helped me have a lot of fun and saved my skull in the process.
