Master of a Dying Art

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This season, we're bringing you stories about people finding their professional stride by virtue of who they know, whether it's breathing new life into an age old profession, taking the reins in a family business, forging your own path with a new idea, or landing the perfect job doing something you'd never before even considered. Today reporter Otis Gray brings us a story about a craft that is no longer as needed as it once was, and a man whose

job is to make sure it's not forgotten. Jim Ellis lives on Cape Cod, and with the help of a very unlikely apprentice, he works to pass along an occupation that was once woven into the fabric of our society over to you, Otis. I don't know, just that I think we're in too much of a hearty these days. Everything's too simple. God, they gotta remember how the old time has got us to this point. It wasn't for them,

we wouldn't be here. So I drove out to Barnstable, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod to meet a guy named Jim Ellis. He lives in this old, historic looking house. There's a plaque outside that says House of Ellis right on the porch, which is a family name here dating all the way back to the Mayflower. And when I walked into Jim's kitchen, he was sitting next to a pair of crutches and he was in a lot of pain. It's just shop

it banks. TC eyes have had both rotator cuffs repaid over the years, and I think I tore another one for a second time. But if I haven't looked at tomorrow, I don't know, we'll see what happens in his line of work. A torn rotator cuff makes things difficult and really really hard, but you can laugh about it. Hey, what else you gonna do? You see the laugh? Or drink beer? That's cheaper than laugh. Not an ideal injury. Because Jim Ellis is a blacksmith. Is the rotator cuff

a result of your work black smithing? I don't know. I think a g e has a lot to do with it. You just heard eighty one that week, and in a world of fast moving, high tech jobs, some that didn't even exist thirty years ago. Jim is a third generation blacksmith. It picked it up from my father, and he got it from my uncle, and my uncle got it from Mr Kent, who started hearing a village

in about eighteen eighty eight. I think in that area, and even at eighty one, Jim still swinging a hammer any day that he can still at it hundred eleven years in the same village, doing the same job, in the same family. I just I love it. I love the old history. I'd try to keep it going. So today, with Jim shoulder on the mend, we follow his story as he strives to pass along the craft from another time. Under a spreading chutnut tree, the fellows smithy stands the Smith.

A mighty man is he, with large and sinewy heads, and the muscles on his brawny arms are as strong as iron bands. His hair is crisp and black and long. His face is like the tan. His brow is wet with honest sweat. He earns whatever he can, and he can look the whole world in the face, for he owes not any man. That's Jim reciting the Village Blacksmith, a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in eighteen forty. Jim has this poem hanging on the wall in his shop.

This is where I first met Jim. I was driving around the cape when I saw a brick building on the side of the road with a sign outside that

said Blacksmith, right in the driveway. I pulled over and I walked in to find Jim amongst the sea of iron tools and hooks and chandeliers, iron everything hanging from the walls ceiling, poking out our shelves and buckets, and talked against the back wall was Jim sitting out a forge, a glowing furnace powered by a hand crank where he heats his iron up until it glows red so he can bend it and hammer into whatever shape he wants.

Like walking through kind of a day. What your tasks are, what you do in the shop, everything, Well, that's kind of a what I like about it. You never know what's gonna do. I mean, people bring things into bvpaid from weather veins to any kind of antique stands and and I've even got an antique picture frames and stuff and says some stuff very intricate, like little wall hooks and plant hangers. And the other day I had to make a U shaped piece of iron to hold the

sign of a guy wanted. And now it's just bang bang, bend it and put a hook on it, and you're all done, just bending, heating up metal and bending it, shaping it. What a lot of us think about blacksmithing, We picture a burly guy at an anvil pounding away on a hot piece of metal. You might be pick shuring a sword or medieval times, and that's part of it. Shaping a square piece of iron into something usable, like

a blade or a hook to hang things. But what a lot of people don't realize is this is how things were originally welded, right up until the nineteen hundreds. Welding as in taking two pieces of metal, getting them hot enough so that they melt, and joining them together the heart. It is easier just to move a good welding heat is twenty dred degrees fahrenheit. When the iron goes past that cherry red color to a bright light yellow,

the iron melts and literally begins to move. With electric and gas welders we have today, that kind of heat comes pretty easy. How years ago they used to have to bring it up to that heat. That's how they did the welding. They didn't have electricity, they didn't have wealth and gases. The welded in the fire, So you gotta get the i nd right to that melting point and then hammer it together. By its nature, all of

Jim's work looks old fashioned. The way things used to be made is not perfect and smooth like most metal objects we see today. Most of the things around his shop have a rougher quality to it, and that's the way he likes it. A lot of people don't like to leave Hamma Max. I love Hamma Box. Matter of fact, sometimes I use this special hammer to make different marks in it. Why do you love the hammer market? It just shows that it's a handhammered, not gunning a machine. Character.

Blacksmithing is a job that's part of our cultural lexicon. Everyone knows what the job is, even though most people today don't know a blacksmith. Even in the nineteen fifties, long after blacksmithing had faded from it's heyday, it's still topped the charts in the song blacksmith Blues by lam A Morse in ninety two. That's because blacksmiths are a

huge part of our human story. The blacksmith was pivotal in every village, town, and city dating back almost a thousand years ago when humans began successfully making iron tools, They fixed armor and made weapons, making the vital to conquest. They made farming equipment, axles for wagons. They were quite

literally what held society together. Blacksmithing remained a completely necessary job right up until the Industrial Revolution, but with the invention of bigger machines affordable tractors for Farmers and Fords model T car to replace the horse and buggy. Blacksmiths quickly found their profession obsolete at the turn of the twentieth century. Afterwards, blacksmiths specialized in craft goods, but much of the profession died away during the depression in the

years following. The craft itself made a huge resurgence during the nineteen seventies as folks became interested in its history and its application to modern sculpture and crafts, but not many people do it as a full time job like

the old days. Jim is not an exception. Well, I try to make enough to keep the shop going, but now it's it's pretty hard to make a living at it the way I'm doing it, But being retired, I don't I don't have to plan on it for my my income, but I do have to break even at least In another life, Jim worked on nuclear weapons in the military, and it was a mechanic until he broke his back in a truck accident in the seventies. Now that he's technically retired, he runs a shop more like

a museum than anything. Although I always had the fire going, I always had a piece of identified people like to see the uh, you know, the medal being forged, and especially kids like to see it putting the water and sizzle and all that. But yeah, we're just just trying to keep the interested in blacksmithing. How many more years do you think you're hav any for blacksmithing? Ah, well, I'll keep that as long as I can. So now

we're back where we started. The gym shoulders. He can sometimes do two hours a day before he's cashed out. But if you ask Jim if he's worried that all his knowledge of tools and blacksmithings stop with hum, he'll tell you not at all. Why because he's got a pretty unlikely protege to carry on the tradition. I guess, so yeah. Yeah. My name is Nora Bourbon and I full time I'm a metal engraver and part time black smith. I say unlikely because Nora is five, too skinny and

prefers to forge an address. Not the classic image you have in your head when you think of a blacksmith. Nope, nope, I'm very petite, little little lady. Usually it's the big, burly dude. Do you think other people find it weird that you do something like blacksmith. I think it surprises a lot of people, considering more of my height and just how scrawny I look. But I think, um, people really respect it and they think it's very interesting what

I do. Nora has been learning from for about three years now, and she enjoys not fitting into the stereotypical image of a blacksmith, being able to prove maybe two young kids like it is really nice to show that as an inspiration to younger people or smaller people, that um, anyone can do this trade. Even though you can swing an eight pounds sledgehammer. You don't have to be a big person that goes to Jim all the time or something like that. This in particular shows that you really

anyone can do anything that they put their mind to. Yeah, she's she's doing wonderful. She loves it. I was gonna smile on her face. I've learned so much from Jim over the last just couple of years, and I've slowly done a little bit on my own here and there throughout this time, this whole time. But I like the old process. I like the simple ways, and um, I even make soap from scratch and I grow vegetables and I grow things in the garden. You're pretty old fashioned.

Yeah yeah, ver. We'll get back to the story in a second. First, a word from Express Employment Professionals. A strong work ethic, takes pride in a job well done, sweats over the details. This is you. But to get an honest day's work, you need a response, you need a call back, you need a job. Express Employment Professionals can help because we understand what it takes to get a job. It takes more than just online searches to land a job. It takes someone who will identify your talents,

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back to our story. I I love her Renaissance spirit. Let's just let's do things the old Wait, yes, it's uh, I don't know, It's just that I think we're in too much of a hurry these days. Everything's too simple. You're gonna slow it out, do it right, do it once, it'll last. I gotta remember how the old time has got us to this point. It wasn't for them, we wouldn't be here toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing away through life. He goes each morning somewhere began, Each evening sees it close.

Something attempted, something done, has earned him a night's repose. Thanks thanks to thee my worthy friend, for the lessons thou hast taught. Thou set the flaming forge of life. Our fortunes must be rocked thus on a sounding ample shaped each burning beat and thought. Being in gym shop, I couldn't help thinking about something I picked up as a job when I was in college, sign painting. I learned typography and painted signs by hand for businesses around Providence,

Rhode Island, where I went to school. It was a really tough thing to be even okay at. Like blacksmithing, sign painting used to be a very necessary job in society before computers and vinyl printing. Sign pages would design storefronts, scale the sides of buildings and paint mammoth, advertisements and logos. It was messy, tedious, hard work, and today it might seem like a creative passion, but years back it was

a real, vital job that would feed families. It taught me patience, something I was born lacking a little bit. And as I felt the brush slowly glide over glass or wood, knowing all the practice I had done before led up to this one mark I had to do in one stroke, there was a sense of satisfaction and confidence that I didn't know before. It is that feeling you get when you've done something right and you know

you didn't take any shortcuts. Today you can drive around and see the remnants of old sign work, faded letters wearing away on the size of brick buildings like ghosts, evidence of something from long ago. And the more I painted, the more I appreciated those disappearing letters, something undeniably human, like a fingerprint, a record of how far we've come hammer marks. If learning an old job like that did anything for me, it was that it helped me appreciate time.

For thirty five year old Nora and blacksmith thing, it's the same I feel that I need to hold onto as much knowledge as I can so that it can't it can stay stick around and doesn't escape. I know, I realized how hard the old type has worked. I mean, you know, I'm listening to my mother, how she grew up on a farm and the things they had to do before she went to school, walked to school and

riding horses, and they worked really, really hard. How hard it was to put an eye entire on a wagon wheel, how it was to make a wagon wheel, all these things. It's just I don't know. You know, if you know that, I think it helps you get along in today's world, knowing what other people went through so you can be where you are. They helped you get there. Jim Ellis's skills and knowledge are part of our collective DNA as humans, and he plays a vital role in making sure that

we don't forget Jim as a craftsman. That's the job he's passing on to Nora. But more than that, to me, I think they're both in the business of gratitude, of passing along and appreciation. What do you think the future of blacksmith thing looks like. I think it's it's comed al for a long time. Yet there's a lot of young people really into it. And uh so, yeah, I think it's compr alf A while I can't see it

Gornaway surely. Yeah, we'll keep keep it alive for On the Job, I motus Gray, thanks for listening and see you next time. M thanks for listening to On the Job, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. Find out more at Express pros dot com. This season of On the Job is produced by Audiation and dread Seat Ventures. Our executive producer is Sandy Smallens. Our producer is Otis Gray. The show is mixed by Matt Noble at The Loft in Bronxville, New York. Find us on I Heart Radio

and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard, please consider rating or reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We'll see you next time. For more inspiring stories about discovering your life's work, Ariation