ASS—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, July 12,1980
Local
BY SHEILA MILLER
GRANTVILLE - After 22
years of working under
horses. George Winters, R 1
Palmyra, says he considers
himself to be a lucky man
At 86 years old (he’ll be 87
in September he says with a
grin), Winters no longer
nails the steel shoes on to
cantankerous horses and
mules but has memories of
the days when he bent over
the forge and pounded the
red hot metal
‘I consider myself to be a
lucky man because in all
that time of working with the
hoises, I was never hurt
Yes, I had some nail
scratches but that’s all,”
Winters recalls
Dippmg back into his
memories, Winters told how
he was bom and raised on a
farm north of Annville, near
Waterworks in Lebanon
County
I stayed on the farm until
I was 19 years old and then I
went to learn the blacksmith
trade,’ Winters said
The man who started him
in the trade was Harvy
Albert from Ono Winters
apprenticed under Albert’s
watchful eye for three years
During his time of
training, Winters met a
young farm girl named
Mary Gerbench The young
couple first set eyes on each
other at an ice cream social
at Walmer’s Church Since
her home wasn t far from
the church, (which is located
near Indiantown Gap,
Winters said) he gave her a
lift home with his horse and
buggy
Now, this was at a time
when Winters ap
prenticeship was drawing to
a close He was ready to take
on a job with Saylor, the
coachsmith m Annville So,
just before he started the
new job, George Winters and
Mary Gerbench were wed
Winters explained that
while at Sayior’s Carnage
Works his job was to put new
tires on the farm wagons and
Winters points to the sharp cogs driven in the
bottom of the shoe to help the mule with its trac
tion and footing on ice
blacksmith’s hammer
buggies These were not
tires as we think of them
today, but were steel tires
“The steel tires stretched
when they wore so I’d have
to shrink and reset them,”
he said pointing to his tire
stretcher “I’d make them
hot at one spot and then
squeeze them Before my
time, they had to cut a piece
out of the steel and weld in
back together, Then they’d
have to heat the steel tire
and stretch it over the
wooden wheel ”
Restmg against an old saw
horse, Winters told how his
career at Saylor’s lasted
only 6 months He said that
the reason he was hired by
Saylors was because the old
blacksmith they had
working for them wanted an
apprentice
When the horses came in
to have new shoes, I had to
trim their feet and set the
shoes on The old blacksmith
would make all the shoes as
fast as I could put them on I
guess you could say I was
what you would call a
floorman "
Then one day, a
blacksmith from Palmyra
came to visit Winters at the
carnage shop and offered
him a job
The man’s name was Ed
Fausnacht When he asked
what I could do, the only
thing I could recommend
was trimming feet and
nailing shoes
‘Fausnacht asked me
Can you weld’’ I said
‘yes’ and he saio ‘You
make your shoes and shoe
your own horses, and I’ll
shoe mine ”
Winters left the Annville
carnage shop to shoe draft
horses in a small blacksmith
shop on Railroad Street in
Palmyra
Winters recalled his
partnership with Fausnacht
lasted only 6 months, from
Spring to Fall “But, in those
At 87, and after 22 years of shoein.
Winters hammers a kettle ring, used for holding
the butcher kettles out of the fire, “When the cus
tomer brought a broken ring to me and asked me if
I could make one just like it, I told him I never
made a one-legged kettle ring before,” chuckled
the 86 year old blacksmith
6 months, I learned more
about the blacksmith trade,
besides shoeing horses, than
I’d learned in 3 years from
Albert
“When I went to work for
him, I told Ed to tell me if the
shoeing didn’t suit him the
way I was doing it
"One day he came over
and picked up the horses feet
I was working on and said
‘That’s exactly as good as
mine’ —that made me feel
good
“I told him I would weld
the toes on the shoes but they
were always crooked for me,
and he told me he’d show me
how to do it right ”
That Fall, Winters said, he
learned Fausnacht was just
getting him ready to turn the
business over to him And for
the next score of years, he
was on his own
Farmers with work horses
made up most of his
customers, Winters said By
1936, when farmers were
beginning to get tractors and
were getting away from
using horses, business began
to fall off
So, with his wife and his
youngest child, Clarence,
(who was 16 years old at the
tune), Winters moved to his
24 acre farm near Grant
ville
When the Winters first
moved to the farm, they
worked the fields with
horses “I couldn’t afford to
buy equipment for such a
little place, so when the time
came that I didn’t use the
horses any more, I rented
the fields With the cash
rent, I was better off than
farming it myself
“That’S when I started to
G 0 (goof off) in here,” he
still rings off the anvil
chuckled, waving his aim
around his work shop
Winters said he always
kept busy doing the repair
work for farmers This year,
though, has been a little
slow, he remarks, and
blames it on the depression
“I enjoy doing the repair
work and helping peopL out
When they ask me if I’m
going to retire, I tell them
-
Different shoes made by Winters are, from top to bottom, left to right: heeUyk
weight shoe, toe weight bar shoe, balance shoe; track shoe (outside heel
out for back foot), side weight, track shoe (front); screw cog mule shoe, drive cog
mule shoe, sharp shoe. The bottom row of shoes are commercial samples given
to Winters by a customer
they won’t let me So, I’m
tired not retired ”
Looking around his shop,
Winters points to a display of
shoes hanging up on the
wooden shed wall He
quickly says the three shoes
on the bottom row were
some he never worked on
some customer just gave
them to him to add to his
collection
All of the other shoes were
made by himself, Winters
explains. Several of them, he
said, were made to “throw a
different gait on a horse ”
He pointed to each one and
names them 'That’s a
balance shoe, a toe-weight
bar shoe, a heel-weight shoe,
a regular track shoe, and a
side weight shoe ”
three of the shoes on
display are mule shoes made
for traction on ice Winters
explains that the one was the
first sharp shoe he ever
made the bottom of the
shoe has razor-sharp looking
plates bent down to dig into
the ice and keep the horse
from slipping “The sharp
shoe took a lot of work on the
anvil to get the edges bent
and sharpened just right ”
With ingenuity and
modernization, the other two
shoes were designed for
easier walking On one, the
cogs were just driven into
the shoe, and on the other,
they could be screwed in
"Then there was a dull
edged summer cog for those
farmers who didn’t want to
change their horses’ shoes
the sharp cogs were taken
out and the dull ones pun
ched in But, these weren’t
used too much,” Winters
adds
Pulling on his ear, Winters
said the hardest thing about
shoeing horses was when he
had to shoe a horse that
would not stand He grinned
as he told about his worst
encounter with a mule
‘A guy brought me a mule
to shoe He had just bought
the dumb thing and he said
the sellers told him he might
have some trouble shoeing
the back feet.
“Well, all I had to do was %
look at his hind feet to know
there was going to be trouble
the hooves were twice as
long in back as in front
‘I got started and the old
mule shook his head and
threw himself flat on the
floor So, we put a rope
around his legs and tieu his
feet, and that’s how we put
the shoes on him
After we finished, the guy
raised his finger to me and
said ‘You won’t have to shoe
that mule again for me if
that’s the kind of treatment
he likes he won’t get it
from me’
‘I never saw that mule
again ’’
Winters said thoughtfully
the majority of horses and
mules he shoed did best
when they were handled^',
nicely “Some don’t want to"
be handled rough ”
“Horses and people are a
lot alike and I’ve had to
deal with both m my
business Everyone of them*
is different Some you have
to whack but most of
them want to be treated
gentley ”
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