My wife and I have been together for fifteen years now.  Judy is a Georgia Peach from the country outside of Macon.  We met as she was finishing up her degree in History from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.  She now works in marketing for an industrial supply company and plays a very large part in the business of Oak Level Forge as well. 

   She enjoys reading and spinning beautiful yarn which she uses to knit into many wonderfully cuddly things for our friends and family.  Judy demonstrates her spinning while I demonstrate my blacksmithing at folk life festivals and craft fairs.   My wife seems to draw bigger crowds than I do….wonder why?  Ha Ha! 
 

Judy loves the country life as much as I do, looking after the critters, tending the wood stove in the winter and the garden in the summer and hiking in our woods year round.  She is beautiful, smart, creative, frugal, funny, but most of all, she is caring and kind.  She is simply the best thing that ever has, or ever will happen to me. She is my reward for something, but I’m not sure what.

Well, let’s see.  I earned a degree in Psychology and worked as a counselor for many years.  I have also been a professional singer/songwriter and guitarist.  Although I retired from the music business some time ago, I recently had one of my songs (“Bottom Road”) recorded by J.D. Wilkes and “The Legendary Shack Shakers” out of Nashville, who have just finished touring Europe opening for Robert Plant and are currently touring the U.S. introducing their new CD “Pandelirium” on the Yep Roc label. (plug! plug!)  Strange how seeds planted so many years ago can suddenly sprout on ya.

But you wanted to know how I ended up a blacksmith…..well, upon retiring from music and moving back to Oak Level, I started building a log cabin.  Just as it reached completion and I was in need of a new creative outlet, it happened.  I met a blacksmith by the name of Larry Cole demonstrating at a local Arts and Crafts fair.  I stood there watching and asking endless questions for a very long time.  Eventually he asked me if I wanted to try my hand at it.  That was it.  I was smitten by smithing.  Larry invited me to a meeting of The Possum Trot Forge Council down in Adams, Tennessee where I in turn met his mentor Mr. Frank Ellis.  Since that time, these blacksmiths in particular, but many others as well, have unselfishly taught me the art of blacksmithing.  They set a very high standard, one which I shall continue striving to both attain and uphold.  Blacksmithing has become much more than a hobby to me since that time.  It has become not only my vocation, but a way of life and a good one at that.  It has kept me healthy in mind, body and spirit.  It has introduced me to kindred spirits both living and long since dead. 

My family has in its possession a short length of rusty old chain.  It only has fifteen links, but each of those links was forge welded by hand, by my Great Grandfather, one Kentucky morning generations before I was born.  Today I can truly appreciate his skill.  Years after my death, I want someone to look at a piece of my work and admire it… to read the hammer marks as a record of another distant morning’s labor of love.  Whether they know my name or not does not matter.  People frequently ask me, “How much do you get for one of those?” and then inevitably “How long does it take you to make one?”  I can hear them silently calculating my hourly wage.  Then they ask incredulously “You can make a living at this?”  I answer with a smile “Define Living?  Do I look like I’m going hungry?” Some folks just don’t get it yet.  I make each piece a little better than the last.  If it isn’t, it goes back into the fire until it is. 

A legacy was given to me.  I intend to take good care of it until my last hammer blow.