The Old Ways

I got a call recently from an old friend who said he needed the help of a blacksmith. What struck me as funny about it was that my friend is a very ‘High Tech’ guy. He’s the first person I thought of when I thought my computer might have crashed not long ago.

My friend brought another high tech guy with him when he came over. They came in a state-of-the-art van outfitted for a wheel chair. The ramp had failed to work as designed and its owner needed a low-tech device that would enable him to secure it. After some discussion and experimentation we came up with a device that filled the need. It only amounted to a piece of tool steel with a little heat applied in a few spots. That was nothing for a smith, except a chance to get rid of another piece of scrap steel lying around. For some reason it impressed these two high tech guys? I got a chuckle out of it… You see, with a few exceptions, my PC being the most obvious, I’m a very low-tech kind of guy. While everyone else I know has started studying high tech systems etc., I started studying blacksmithing. I guess I’ve always been out-of-step with most people around me.

The episode got me to thinking. I love the old ways of doing things. Making ice cream in an old hand-cranked bucket, cooking on cast iron, and hammering hot steel are only a few of the old ways I cherish. I collect antique and vintage tools along with a few pieces of antique stoneware and furniture that have struck my fancy. I’ve never really tried to explain why the old ways appeal to me so much. The thought came to me last night that I don’t want for those things to be lost in our rush to the future. When my tools were new some of them represented the culmination of hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of years technological development. It seems a shame to me to simply discard them in favor of a new way of doing something. They had value once in helping men to manipulate the world around them. They still have value in representing an old way of doing things. There are, of course, other ways of remembering.

I don’t re-enact any particular period of history the way some do, but I respect it as a way to remember, and learn from, those that came before. I have a stepfather that collects and restores old military vehicles. It’s his way of honoring those that came before and the sacrifices they made to get us here. These, too, are putting value on the way things were once done. It puts value on the contributions of our ancestors. I don’t think those things should ever be forgotten. I don’t want the past to be forgotten. The past is where we came from. It’s who we are. What we’re doing now will belong to the future.

As my friend and his buddy left they joked; “when civilization breaks down, high tech guys will be out of jobs and we’ll need blacksmiths, otherwise who will make our swords and knives for us?”

Such things do need to be considered after all!