ONC: So how long have you been blacksmithing?
Since I was 19. ONC: And how old are you now?
I’m 70. ONC: So to you it looks natural because you have five decades’ experience.
named Tim Moon. And Tim teaches all five [bluegrass] instruments. I’ve been taking lessons now for six and a half years. I like the fiddle. I like the mandolin. I got a guitar and he gave me five or six lessons on the guitar. I got a banjo, and he gave me a couple of lessons on the banjo. All of these take practice. Like blacksmithing. They all take practice. Well, I got a head start on that, I got 50 years of practice.
That’s the way it is with a new instrument. It’d be like handing an awkward instrument to Eric Clapton and saying, “Here, play something.”
ONC: You work a full schedule here; you take music lessons. You’re not kicking back in a recliner with a book. What drives you to keep this busy?
ONC: Precisely. “Play this oboe.”
I’m sort of a workaholic. In school, I taught real demanding courses, and I had to study all the time to stay ahead of the kids. Then I would work in the shop.
Yeah! (Laughs) If you don’t have it in your head to do this, it’s a struggle. My sister took piano lessons for 12 years, and she still can’t play the piano. It has to be in there. The same way with crafts, it has to be in there. A lot of these people around here are fifth and sixth generation potters. Whether they inherited it or not, they were around it. It infused into their bodies somehow. You have to have a knack for most anything. I have a knack for science and math. It just came easy. Some of the children that I teach, they were bright kids, and a lot of them became doctors and lawyers, but they were not mathematicians. Other things came easy. ONC: You take fiddle and mandolin lessons. Does that come naturally to you?
No, it’s hard. It’s like climbing up a rock face. All the people up at John C. Campbell Folk School, folk music is really big up there. Mountain music is really big. They teach every one of the musical instruments that you can think of. You can make banjos and you can make dulcimers. Everybody up there plays something, and here I am, I couldn’t play nothing. I couldn’t even play a radio. When I finished school, I said “Look. I’m going to take time off, and I’m going to try to learn this.” I went up to Asheboro. At Evans Music Center up there, there’s a guy
If I’m not working, if the TV is on, I’m sitting there either drawing sketches out for something I’m going to make in the shop or working math problems. I kid you not. Still to this day, I like math that well. It keeps me sharp. I don’t want to sit there and watch TV and become a couch potato. If I’m not going to do anything, I might as well not do anything here at the shop. If I sit beside the stove all day long and a few people come in and talk to me, that’s fine. If I get something done, that’s fine. I’m trying to back off on the big orders. I used to do gates and railings for houses, but that’s really hard on my body. I don’t like the pressure. I’m doing orders right now. I try to keep stock in the shop, and then I’ve got a whole stack of orders there. I’ve got plenty to do. I just don’t want to (laughs). Learn about Jerry Darnell’s Mill Creek Forge at millcreekforge.com, or stop by at 4512 Busbee Road, Seagrove. Mill Creek Forge is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., except Tuesdays, when it is open from 1:30 to 5 p.m.
APRIL 2018 |
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