I drove home, let the forge go cold behind me, and then I picked up the phone and made the call that developer never dreamed an old blacksmith could make.
I called the historical society.
Because that developer had bought a block and a lease, but he had never once asked what he was actually tearing down for his parking structure.
He called me an old man in the way of prime real estate, and he had no idea that the shop itself was one of the oldest working forges in the state, and that my ironwork was on half the historic buildings he could see from his own office window.
The historical society knew that forge. Of course they did. They had been trying for years to get it protected, and they had never had the push they needed. A developer threatening to level it for parking was exactly the push.
They moved fast, the way people move when something they love is about to be lost. They filed for historic landmark status, and they brought the records, the age of the building, the ironwork, the century of history welded into that block. The commission listened.
You cannot bulldoze a landmark for a parking structure. Not in this state. Not once the paperwork lands.
The building was designated a historic landmark, the forge and all. The developer parking plan died on the drawing board. He could not tear down what the state had just decided the state would keep.
And here is the part that still makes me smile. Because the forge was now a landmark, and because I was the last man for forty miles who could do what I do, the society did not just save the building. They found the grant money to keep it a working forge, with me at the fire, and one condition I had refused to think about for thirty years.
I train an apprentice now. A young woman who came asking to learn, the first person who ever did. What I know will not die with me after all.
She is a natural at the fire, that young woman. Steady hands, a good ear for when the iron is ready. I watch her draw out a bar of steel and I see thirty years ago, when I was the one learning, back when there was still someone to teach me.
The mounted police still bring their horses to my door. The museums still call. The old families still need the ironwork nobody else can make. And now, when I am gone, there will be a hand at this forge that knows how.
Thirty years at that forge, and a developer called me an old man in the way of a parking lot. Turns out I was standing in the way of losing something this whole region would have mourned. The fire still burns. It always will now.