This past weekend, my dad gave me the opportunity to go through some of my great grandfather’s old tools and scrap metal that he left behind when he died.  As someone who is kind of a history buff, it was awesome to see some of the stuff he used as he was THE blacksmith for the area he lived in a long time ago.  Who knows, maybe that is where I get my interest in metal fabrication.

I came by enough grinding wheels to last me three lifetimes, but even more interesting was the newspaper that the grinding wheels were wrapped in.

The first picture is just one of the several grinding wheels I found in this treasure trove of stuff.  The second shows the date of the newspaper (July 1949) and the rest are some of the articles.  The newspaper is a local one here in Oregon called “The Oregonian” which I believe is based in Portland.  One of the articles has a blue map showing the new road construction and a picture with a caption about the construction of the Detroit Dam, which is pretty cool.  As locals will know, the Detroit Dam is a pretty major landmark here in the Willamette Valley and I have gone diving up there and seen the houses that are submerged under the water in “Old Detroit”.  The government bought up all of the houses and land before they built the dam.  I also thought that the article about the “negro’s” was pretty interesting.  It shows how Oregon was way ahead of the curve in desegregation and integration of the races.  This was five years before the official start of the civil rights movement which spanned 1954 to 1968.

The paper was kept in relatively good condition, likely from some kind of oil that had seeped into it over the years.  It had a kind of oily feel to it and wasn’t brittle at all.  I checked out all of the local classified ads, which listed a three bedroom house in Portland for $1000 and a ten bedroom house for $6500 with a required down payment of $1000.  It seems my blacksmithing hobby is turning into an episode of American Pickers. It is going to take me several days to go through all of the stuff I got.  I plan to catalog all of it and post it to this blog, just in case anyone is curious about the contents of my great grandfather’s garage.

I know some people come here to read about bees, but as they are not really interesting at this time of year, I will mostly be posting about blacksmithing and major milestones for the business.  Once the spring hits, you bee lovers can rest assured that I will be posting more about bees and less about blacksmithing.  I’m also thinking about creating a YouTube channel to document my progress in the various aspects of our farm life.  I’m not sure whether people find that topic interesting or not, but we will see I guess.  I have also come to the realization that most of the people who see this have no face to go with the name, so I am posting a picture of Michelle and I from when we were in Las Vegas last month.  You’ve already seen Goose and Charlie, our dogs, so I won’t bore you with more of those…even though they are terribly cute.  I guess that’s it for today.  Go fourth and be awesome!