Time for gab

Last week I had shared with you the story of needing to add a glory hole to my "box of tools", and how my brother's friend Ken had given us an old gas fired forge that he didn't have any use for.

Well we got the forge running and fired it up before starting to refabricate it into something that I could use. It really heated up quickly and got me excited.

 I started to tear it apart. It didn't appear to be used a whole lot and so the bricks weren't to hard to tear apart.  Next I welded up a frame with rollers to make it easier to move around. After putting the forge on rollers, I needed to find some sort of steel barrel type thing or a piece of rolled steel that I could attach to the forge and line with castable refractory. The past is often a servant to the future and my memory knew of a place that had a really old but functioning steel roller.

When I was growing up on the farm we would often go to an Amish guy for getting metal cut and bent for our different projects. So that's where I thought that I would go for help with this project. This particular place is very busy and the best way to get anything done in a timely manner is to help out while they are doing it and staying there until it is done. 

Going there brought back a lot of good memories as I stood waiting for my turn. On the farm, rainy days were often the days that you would run to the shop for parts. And often everyone and their neighbor would do the same.

It was a time to socialize a little, to share how things were going, to feel that kindred spirit that said that you weren’t all alone in this world.

And this day seemed like that. First a guy that I grew up with that had a farm nearby showed up to get some disc mower blades for cutting hay. It was good catching up with him. Then an Amish guy showed up. He needed help with his manure spreader. While he waited, he wanted to know who my dad was. When I started to mention my dad's name,..  "oh yeah, I remember him".   And so it went until it was my turn in line. 

It was good to hear and see other people, to take some time out of the busy day to wait and gab about things.

Now I'm sure that talking and visiting too much can keep you from getting things done. But in this day and age, with everything being ordered on the internet, and everyone trying to be super efficient, I wonder if taking time to gab is something that we don't do enough of, something that we’ve lost as a society.

I've heard it said that the main requirement for being a good counselor is being a good listener. Just maybe a little more time down at the shop would be good for us all.