Seeing the picture of Billy Lawrence sure brought back some
memories.  His old blacksmith shop was located on the same block where
the Dunseith Nursing Home is now.  He had a rusted tin building with a
dirt floor and holes in the tin everywhere you looked.  His old forge
was fired by coal so the inside of the shop always smelled like burning
coal.  We lived just a block north of the shop and often I would come
outside and could hear the old trip hammer operating as Billy was
sharpening plow shares.  It made an unforgettable sound,  kind of like
‘ca ting, ca ting, ca ting’.  It was powered by a flat belt that lifted
the big hammer head and then a latch/trigger would drop the hammer at
regular intervals making the sound on a precise interval.  Billy would
hold the red hot iron with tongs and move it along as the trip hammer
flattened the edge of the plow shares making them sharp as new.  I think
Billy kind of worked whenever he had blacksmithing to do because I seem
to remember he came and went when he wanted to.  He drove an old ’46-’48
Ford two door car and if the car was there and the door was open,  he
was ready for business.  There was an old blacksmith named Fred Bolton
in Sherwood, ND.  His shop was similar to Billy Lawrence’s. One time my
father-in-law had bent a big angle iron on a chisel plow and tried to
straighten it himself using a big sledge hammer.  He had succeeded in
beating a bunch of hammer dents on it but it was still crooked so I
helped him take it off and we took it into the blacksmith shop.  Old
Fred just stood there and looked at it with disgust.  He lit a cigarette
and said,  “You know,  there’s only two kind of people in hell.  Bad
people—and people that try to straighten cold iron.”  He then went to
work and did the job right.  Thanks Gary!

Dick