Posted on 02/27/2011 1:51:45 AM PST by thecodont
At the Woodland Oaks Ranch in San Dimas, the welcoming committee is out. Hens and roosters, clucking and crowing in the morning light, are the first ambassadors, followed by Milo the Lab, Julia the Corgi and Sparkle the goat.
Digger, a chestnut gelding, sticks his head out of a barn and watches as John Gorton steps out of a white Ford F-150 pickup and lifts the side panels and rear door of the shell, revealing racks of horse shoes and a clutter of tools. He pulls on chaps, hefts an anvil onto a knee-high table and fills a bucket with water.
"Hi, Digger, how you doing?" He stands in the doorway of the barn, halter in hand. "Let's go get some new shoes on you."
[...]
Horseshoeing may be a throw-back to the past, but so too are the rural neighborhoods and communities that Gorton visits: nooks and crannies in the region's topography, forgotten easements and municipalities where horses are still accepted.
Out here paved roads turn to dust. The rattle of the city doesn't quite disappear. It recedes, and when Gorton puts heat to metal, hammer to anvil, the digital world goes analog and when he stands beside a horse, his senses quicken to the flicker of the ears, the darkness in the eyes, a wildness that is beautiful, dangerous and life-affecting.
He keeps to a tight skein of freeways and sees about 200 clients in the San Gabriel Valley, the Puente Hills and the Inland Empire, all within 30 miles of his home in Chino. He built his business through word of mouth, making the rounds of stables at 17 and sloughing off the question, "Where's your dad?"
[...]
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
The subject of the origin of the horse is not crucial to the story, but since the writer brought it up . . .
The LA Times is a mainstream whore, and as such never misses a chance to push the unproven atheistic hypothesis of evilution. Tells you who they work for - the guy with the horns.
Horseshoeing is very very hard work. I graduated from Oklahoma Farrier’s College back in 1973 and shod horses in NM, Colo, OK and Ark for a few years. I shod my last one in 1977.
The work is backbreaking and a killer in Ark-Ok summer heat!
I still do some blacksmithing for odds and ends and verious steel fabrication.
Still have my tools, anvil (Peter Wright) and a home made forge with which I burn OKla coal!
On a cool day forge work is fun!
Ouch! Should have scotch hobbled him or double scotch hobbled him and thrown him on his side!
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