This here is the molding room...or so the foundry calls it. Down here we call it the fryin’ pan ... or the bake oven ... or several other choice titles that I’ll be keepin’ to myself today, since there’s younguns about. This is where we pour the iron -- and, pardner, I’ll let you in on a little secret, iffen you won’t spread it about. All of us molders like to complain about the heat and such, but the truth of the matter ... we wouldn’t be anywhere else. We’re proud to be molders and we’re proud of the job we do.

You see, it takes a real steady hand to handle hot iron. It ain’t just anybody who can work it. Oh, and they’s a lot more to it that just the iron -- although that’s the part that seems to attract the most attention. You see, they’s molds to set up and sand to pack -- and once it’s poured, they’s the shake-out. I guess I could go on most all day. I’ve really found a home here in this sand pit.

Not that I’ve been here all that long -- only been with the company two year. But in November of '39, I got set up to shake out one day fer a fella whose pardner took ill. ... I’ve been down here ever since. I don’t know, it just seemed that the rhythm of the place sorta took hold with me -- and I just fell in step. They is quite a rhythm to this place. The early hours we all set up the molds while the cupola is a-cookin' that pig iron. And when the temperature gets just right and that golden-colored liquid is a-bubblin' and a-spittin', then we starts catchin' it -- line up right over there by the spout. That’s right -- it comes out a big spout, just about like my ma’s old tin spout she fixed up on her cabin to catch the rainwater -- she used to like to do her washin' in rainwater. She said it made her clothes smell better. She was funny that way. ...

Anyway, when that iron gets all lively and quick, we lines up and catches it as it pours out -- catch it in a ladle. You’ve seen these ladles -- sorta like an oversized drinking gourd -- and we carry that ladle over to the molds we been settin' up all morning. That’s my favorite part, pouring that fiery liquid iron into those little holes, and then that’s when the iron does its magic. As it cools it forms into the parts -- the grates, or grills, or doors, or feet, whatever part we be a workin' on that day.

Like I said afore, I only been here a couple a years, and sometimes in August it feels like I been here for nigh onto forty year. But it’s a good place, and the men down here, they’re a bit ... I don’t know ... set apart, somehow. The works dirty -- and hot -- and it takes a fair amount of strength to swing a ladle. But they’s somethin’ more. It also takes a steady hand -- and maybe what you’d call an eye or a sixth sense about you. I don’t know -- and I’m a-talkin’ over my head, I guess -- but they’s somethin’ about it. Just makes a man proud at the end of the day.

We had some hard times afore I got on here. We had a piece o’ ground up the mountain over near Reliance -- had been my granpappy’s place. That land twern’t much for scratchin’ out a livin'. Oh, it twas a pretty place, a-settin’ right up on the top o’ that ridge. My heart yearns a bit for one more summer evenin’, when the cool finally settles in and the green turns to blue in those mountains that just sorta step on each other a-climbin’ up to the east, and you settles your back agin' the porch post. 'Twas a good way to come up and I think on it often, but there just wasn’t livin' enough for me and mine, so I had to find one. Mary Lou says she’s proud o’ me -- says we’re gonna be just fine. We got a small place out the Lead Mine Road. It means a fair bit of travelin' each day, but it’s better out there -- we can still breathe a bit. I don’t think we’d be as happy livin’ right on top of this town. Not that it ain’t a good town. It seems to be. The people are a workin’ bunch -- don’t run into too many triflin’ sort, and I’s raised to think that was important: findin’ what the Good Lord intended for you to be a-doin’ and then goin’ ahead and doin’ it. Don’t have much use for idleness.