"Is that a good price?" Blondie picked up the frozen barbecue wings at Amelia's, looked at them, put them back, and moved on. I took a look at the price, and decided that they were an OK deal, nothing to write home about, but not a bad price either.

That was a week ago. Tonight, Blondie made the wings for supper. "They're kinda hot," she told me. Sometimes, we have differences of opinions about "hot". The package said barbecue wings, not hot wings, so I wasn't too worried.

No Water In My Glass

I bit in, and put the wing down. I reached for my glass - and it was ice, no water. "I need some water." There was a jug of water just pass her. She looked at me blankly.

I said, "Would you please pass me the water?" She responded, "You have a glass right there. There's some ice in it, even."

"Yes, I said. I need water. Would you please pass the water?"

There's Some Water In The Jug

"Oh," she said. "There's some water in the jug here." If you recall, I had in recent centuries eaten some really hot wings, and she was giving me geography lessons.

"Yes," I agreed. "Would you please pass the water?" She looked at me blankly. I stood up and hobbled around the cat and dog who were doing their best to trip me, around beyond her chair to grab the jug of water about four inches from her elbow. I hobbled back to my chair, poured the water in my glass, and took a sip.

No Need To Stumble Over Livestock

"Oh," she said, "If you'd only asked me, I would have been happy to pass you the water. There's no need for you to stumble over the livestock."

I was now on my third glass of water. Did I mention those wings were hot? "Oh, it doesn't take me long to look at a piece of chicken."

So I told her the story about the horseshoe. There are a lot of family stories about Grandpa, the blacksmith. Mama called him Grandpa, but in fact, he was on Dad's side of the family. He had a smithy at Section Eight, Ohio, until he died in 1953. The town was so small that it no longer exists.

Grandpa Married Again And Again

Grandpa married a young wife when his first wife died, married a young wife when his second wife died, married a young wife when his third wife died, and in his nineties, as a widower, still practicing as a blacksmith, he was regularly having young women who lived nearby offering to keep his house and to keep his bed warm.

They weren't after his money; he didn't have much, and they weren't demanding that he marry them. He was a charming gent, though, with a great sense of humor, and if he was still practicing the art of a blacksmith in his nineties, you can imagine what his physique was like.

Most people think of a blacksmith as someone who shoes horses. That's a different job, that of a farrier. A blacksmith is someone who manufactures things of black iron, of which horseshoes is only one item. When I was growing up, we had lots of tools, pliers, wrenches, and such, that were made by blacksmiths, and hinges on the barn doors, and well, yeah, they made horseshoes as well as put them on, for the few people who still had horses. The biggest part of their business, though, was welding. If you heat up two pieces of black iron and pound them together, they weld together. Fold the metal over, and pound it some more, then fold it over and pound it some more.

Farmers Liked Blacksmiths

Farmers would prefer to take implements to the blacksmith shop for repairs rather than a gas or electric welding shop, because unless it's expertly done, a gas or electric weld is weaker than the metal it joins, but a hammer weld is considerably stronger. The bulk of Grandpa's work was fixing stuff.

And if you recall, televisions didn't become popular until about 1950 or so. They came out in 1939 or so, but during WWII, nobody could buy sets, and nobody was building TV stations. A few stations were built in the late 1940s, but many of the ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates weren't built until the early 1950s.

Gathering For Entertainment

Families would gather around the radio - in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Radio (as RCA was known) was the "hot stock" on Wall Street, enjoying the same favor later given to Xerox, and Polaroid, and later still to the various internet stocks.

People attended church for the entertainment value, or went to Grange meetings, and the fellows would gather at the barber shop, at the feed mill, at the garage, or at the smithy to talk politics and the weather, to trade stories, to shoot the bull.

Consequently, there was a group of lazy ne'er-do-wells gathered at the blacksmith shop one day when one of the Section 8 locals walked in one day. There was a horseshoe on the ground just inside the door, and he picked it up to toss it to the side, so nobody would accidently trip on it.

That Was A Mistake

Oooh, that was a mistake. The horseshoe was cooling off. He dropped the horseshoe right where it was, stuck his burnt hand in his pocket as gracefully as possible, and sidled over to a beam to lean against while trading stories.

"Hot, huh?" said one of the other regulars.

"Naw," said the newcomer. "Seen one horseshoe, seen 'em all. It don't tame me long to look at a horseshoe."

And for several generations of our family, when someone in our family has gotten burned, they explain that it doesn't take them very long to look at a skillet, or the engine in the tractor, whatever. Or, in the case of tonight's supper, it don't take me long to look at a barbecue chicken wing.

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blacksmiths - burns - cold water - farriers - gimps - hot wings - pets - radio - television