[Magdalen] The Village Smithy.

[Cantor03 at aol.com]

I heard some metallic clanking noise this morning as I walked the
dogs.  It was eerily like that of a blacksmith's hammer and  anvil.  
It turned out to be a neighbor working on some equipment in his
garage, but the sound set off a myriad of memories.
 
My childhood home in a village of 1,400 in NW Wisconsin, was
four blocks from the school complex which included grade school
and high school - there was no "middle" school.
 
About a block and a half along the most direct route there - and it
was always to be walked in any weather - was a genuine village
blacksmith shop.
 
I grew up with the familiar, but somehow comforting clank of the
village smithy's hammer, usually shaping some red-hot iron
rods and welds, or actually shoeing horses, which were still in use
on some of the small regional farms.
 
The shop was wooden, about 30' x 70', and black as coal inside.
The only other color was the red hot flaming pit and the glow 
from metal being softened. 
 
The smithy was a large, powerful man whose family name was
Anderson (along with half the local population), and though you'd
have to substitute "spreading elm tree" for "chestnut tree" since the
Upper Midwest was out of the range of the American Chestnut,
the poem says it well:
 
"Under a spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands.
The smith, a mighty man was he with large and sinewy hands.
And the muscles of his brawny arms were strong as iron bands."
 
---Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
 
 
 
 
David Strang.