People like Delbert Smith, the blacksmith (so named in the tradition of the smithy going back centuries) inherited their skills from fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers. He was 84 when I filmed him in 1970, making his birth date 1886. His forebears stretched back to before the Revolution. His blacksmith forge and tools were in the barn behind his house, where they had been for at least three generations. As he notes in the film nobody got paid for their work until the dairy farmers got their money for milk. But in that interlocking world neighbors helped neighbors. There was nothing bucolic or sentimental about this; it was habit and tradition. Not until it's gone do we realize the massive nature of the loss.
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