Fathers
Ric Gagelin
My Dad, the Village Smithy
May, 2014
“Under a spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands; The smith a mighty
man is he, with large and sinewy hands; and the muscles of his brawny arms are strong
as iron bands.”
Many of us older folks remember those words of Longfellow describing the village
blacksmith of 1842, as we probably read his poem in grammar school English class. I’m
sure nowadays it’s not included in any grade school curriculum, and if you asked even
the brightest young person nowadays, you may find it hard to even get even a partially
accurate description from them as to what a blacksmith was, or is.
I had the honor of being the youngest son of a village blacksmith. When I make
this statement most people immediately think of someone who shoed horses for a
living. While it may be true that this was one of the many tasks a blacksmith
performed, generally speaking, if you were ever kicked through a wall because, while
shoeing a 2000 lb plow horse, you accidently drove a nail through the tender part of its
hoof, shoeing horses is not a job you specialized in. The guys who did specialize in that
job were called ferriers.
My father made a living in several different professions prior to owning and
operating a blacksmith shop. He came alone to this country from Germany in 1903
when he was 16 years old. As a teenager, he was trained to be a wagon maker. So
when he got off the boat in New York, he was trained in a skill that was rapidly
growing obsolete. His first job was driving a milk wagon in Wisconsin. I still remember
seeing a bearskin coat around the house, that he wore back then to keep warm in the
winter while driving around picking up cans of milk from farmers. Later he worked as
a logger. When he got enough money to buy a team of horses, he graduated from
felling trees to dragging them out of the forest, which paid a little more. Later he
worked at the sawmill. He told of a coworker who had the misfortune of getting a leg
sawed off (no OSHA back then).
He and another fellow got a job rebuilding the horse harnesses at a bonanza farm
in South Dakota. They worked all winter in an unheated barn. Because he wanted to
be more American, somewhere along the line, he changed his name. Johann Albrecht
Goegelien became Albert John Gagelin. After returning to Germany and marrying my
mother, he then owned and operated a small lumber yard. Later, he moved to North
Dakota, where he worked in and became the foreman of a Ford garage, working on
Model Ts. After being gassed several times by carbon monoxide exhaust fumes in the
garage (again, no OSHA), he purchased a blacksmith shop in a nearby small town,
Barney, N.D. As a blacksmith, he became a master welder and worker of iron. Most of
his customers were farmers who were always breaking some implement or wearing it
out. Our motto was, “We can fix anything but a broken heart”.
Three of my older brothers (I had four brothers and five sisters) grew up in that
small shop, learning to be, along with my dad, the best blacksmiths in the county.
Early on, there were still a few farmers that used wagons to haul hay, so there was yet
a market for his wagon maker skills. Wagon wheels were made of oak and had a
wrought iron rim or tire as it was called. After awhile, from pounding on the dirt
roads, the rim would become loose on the wheel and the wheel would have to be
rebuilt and the rim diameter made smaller.
Typically, my dad would wait until there was a bunch of wheels that needed to be
rebuilt, and then would set up the shop for doing so. After the hubs, spokes and fellies
were all assembled tight together, and the rims cut and welded back together, all of
the rims were stacked one another atop a fire of the oak wood scraps from fixing the
wheels. One after another, my dad, along with one or two of my brothers, would lift a
red hot rim from the fire and place it on the wooden wheel. There was a lot of fire and
smoke during the operation along with some anxious conversation (my dad never
cursed or swore), as they pried and pounded on the rim with sledges to get it into
position on the wheel. Naturally, you didn’t want the wooden wheel to get burned
too much. When finally in place, the wheel was quickly lifted off the jig and rolled into
a trough of water to quench the tire and shrink it further onto the wheel. My first job
as a 5 year old, was to carry the water from a cistern pump to fill the trough. As a kid, I
thought it was very exciting to watch the process and smell the oak smoke and watch
them work with the red hot iron rims.
Another memorable task my dad and brothers did was to sharpen plowshares. In
that part of Dakota, the farmers did most of their plowing in the fall. In early
September, the farmers would start bringing in their worn plowshares into the shop to
be sharpened and the whole floor of the shop would be covered with them, either
waiting to be sharpened or already sharpened. This was done by heating the
plowshare in a coal burning forge, first the tip and then the land. Dad would get them
yellow hot and draw them out to be thinner and have a better cutting capacity. This
involved a lot of hammering on the red or yellow hot plowshare, first shaping by hand
with a 3 pound hammer, then with the trip hammer. The trip hammer was a
motorized hammer which delivered blows in rapid succession. Holding a twenty
pound hot plowshare by a set of tongs under the trip hammer was a feat of strength
and skill.
Of course, there was a lot of noise generated from the pounding. Because it was
so hot working around the forge and red hot metal, my dad used to start the forge at 5
o’clock in the morning, in order to begin work when it was cooler. You could hear that
trip hammer anywhere in the small town. I don’t think anyone ever complained; they
perhaps understood that it was just a man working hard to support his family.
After the plowshares were cooled off, either by letting them lie outside the shop
or by quenching those that were called soft-centered, they needed to be ground to
finally shape. This was done by hand using a large grinder. (As I got older and entered
into the scene, that was one of my jobs.) Again, due to time and money, he and my
brothers sometimes worked at night in the summer. After dark, the powerful rays
from the arc welding equipment would light up the town. Again, there were no
complaints from the residents.
“Week in, week out, from morn till night, you can hear his bellows blow; You can
hear him swing his heavy sledge, with measured beat and slow, like a sexton ringing
the village bell, when the evening sun is low”
After World War II started, my two oldest brothers were drafted, one into the
Army Air Corps, the other into the Navy. This left my middle brother at the age of 13
to become my Dad’s only helper. He was smart enough to skip the eighth grade and
start high school, but then the War broke out and he had to quit school and work for
my Dad. He grew up real fast to be sure.
Later, when the war was over, and my older brothers were lucky enough to make
it back alive, my dad retired from blacksmithing. One of my brothers took over his
shop and the other started his own business. I worked for both of them, as did my
next older brother. Then the Korean War broke out, and my brother, who had spent
World War II in the shop, was drafted into the Army. He served 14 months in combat
as a field wireman and forward observer in the Artillery, and he too, fortunately got
out okay.
Farming changed somewhat, became more mechanized, and my brothers
specialized in welding and machine work, utilizing lathes and milling machines.
Through my working for them, and National Defense loans (yes, all of my brothers and
I were draftees) I was able to finance my education as an aerospace engineer. A far
cry from being a blacksmith, but there were more than a few things that I learned
there that I could apply as an engineer.
My dad eventually bought a restaurant which he later sold and became a cabinet
maker which he did until his full retirement. Although he was pretty busy working 6
days a week in the shop, I learned a lot from him. Outside of being such a hard
worker, he was a completely honest man who never cursed or swore or drank. He
didn’t teach me about baseball, football or boxing; I had my older brothers who did a
pretty good job of that. I did learn honesty, respect and hard work from him. On
Father’s day, he accepted the new ties and other gifts rather reluctantly from his
children. I took German in junior college as a prerequisite to perhaps entering into
chemical engineering. I can remember proudly coming home and asking my Dad "Wie
gehts?” (“How goes it” in German). With a sly smile he answered me in English. (I
never ever heard him speak a word of German).
“The gates are alright but the fences are all falling down”.
“….Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, onward through life he goes; Each morning sees
some task begin, each evening sees it close. Something attempted, something done,
has earned a night’s repose. Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, for the lesson
thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life our fortunes must be wrought; Thus
on its sounding anvil shaped each burning deed and thought.”
My Dad standing at the anvil in his shop, circa 1927
Richard (Ric) Gagelin holds a Master of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from North Dakota
State University. Hehas been a full time resident of Lake Wildwood since he retired in 2008, after 42
years as a mechanical and aerospace engineer. You can send your e-mail comments to the author at
[email protected].
File: 514-Gagelin-MyDadtheSmithy-1-14.pdf
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