On the Moraine, Part XV

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

Among the collection of buildings in the McNary farmyard, there was a small granary. Most old farmsteads had one of these, usually built upon stone piers so the floor was as high as a wagon bed.  

This one was and is the same, for it is largely still standing as I write this. On the back side of this was a lean-to which has now mostly fallen in.

In this lean-to, Dad set up a forge and anvil, and all the hammers and tongs that go with such an operation – a blacksmith shop. Before Dad had moved to Troy in 1935, he had been a half-owner in a blacksmith shop in Graysville, Ind., where he grew up and where my parents are buried now. 

In fact, that is how he had gotten to Troy. He and his partner had bought a Hobart electric welder. Neither one of them knew how to use it, and they decided someone needed to go to arc welding school. They flipped a coin, and Dad got to do the big adventure and go to Hobart’s welding school in Troy.  

In those days, this was like going to the other side of the world. When he completed the six-week class, Hobart Brothers hired him. So, he went back to Graysville, sold his half of the shop to his partner, and moved his family to Troy. It was his ticket out of rural Depression-era poverty.

Side note: Welding is still a great career. The Hobart Welding School, and many others, are booming. Today, welding school graduates will earn $80,000 their first year (with overtime).

So, we had our little blacksmith shop on the farm. I learned how to build a fire in the forge, with just the right blend of metallurgical coke and coal. I learned the colors of steel as you heat it up. And I learned how to weld with a forge, an anvil and some really big hammers.

You might call this my metallurgy class. Along with the mechanic experience, I received rebuilding the old John Deere tractor. I had a great start on an engineering career, and I wasn’t even a teenager yet.

We also had timber-working tools that one would use to repair a post and beam barn. These included adzes, broadaxes and massive hand drills on whose frame you stood in order to drill a hole.  

One time, we had to make a couple of barn beams in order to fit out our main barn for tobacco hanging.

These experiences gave me an education that I could have not gotten anywhere else. Most of these skills – on a widespread basis – were already gone by World War II.

Note: Geologically, Ohio is roughly two states divided by a line that runs from Cincinnati to Cleveland. Sometimes, this line is thought to roughly follow the old “3C” highway or I-71. It veers quite widely from this line, particularly in Highland County. North and west of this line, the state is fairly flat and smooth, the result of the last glacier of the Ice Age. South and east of this line are the Appalachian foothills, undisturbed by glaciers. In most textbooks, this line is called the Terminal Moraine. Starting in the 1950s, my family acquired two farms. The first one, known as the McNary Farm, is located at the junction of Highland, Ross and Pike counties. The McNary Farm is clearly on the southeast side of the Terminal Moraine. The other farm, known as the Beaver Farm, is located on the north side of state Route 506 at the intersection of that highway and Franklin Branch, a creek which is clearly marked on the Highland County engineer’s map of today. The Beaver Farm is definitely on the northwest side of the Terminal Moraine.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.