PEA RIDGE — In today’s way of life, we have become accustomed to discarding a machine or apparatus that gets old or broken and replacing it with a new one. That was not at all the case in years gone by. Things were repaired. Most communities, even small towns and villages like the Pea Ridge of 70 or 80 years ago, had blacksmiths, welders, repairmen who had skills for working with metals long before the days of electric welders and other such wonderful modern inventions. The three such men that I remember in the Pea Ridge area were Johnny Clanton, Roscoe “Shorty” Hall and Pearly Cloyd.
They were active metal workers and repairmen during the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and, some of them, into the 1960s.
Johnny Clanton early had a shop behind the little building in old downtown which once was Webb’sHatchery, and later housed a popular cafe. Johnny later moved his shop to his own property in the 300 block of today’s McCulloch Street.
Shorty Hall had his shop on today’s Davis Street, on the property where Jeff Spivey and his family now live, across from the Black Street entrance to the Pea Bowl. The Hall house was at the crest of the rise, where the Spivey house now stands, and Shorty’s shop was near the street in the low area just south of the house.
Pearly Cloyd lived east of Pea Ridge on Twelve Corners Road, a short distance from the turnoff from Arkansas Hwy 72. He had his shop there on the farmnear his house.
Also, in the longer ago days, early in the 1900s, Harve Ricketts had a blacksmith shop located in downtown Pea Ridge where the upholstery shop stands today. The Harve Ricketts blacksmith shop building was replaced in 1948 by the C.H. Mount Grocery and Feed Store.
The Ricketts Shop had also made wooden barrels in the old days, especially in the times when Benton County and the Pea Ridge area were big apple orchard areas.
I have been fascinated by some of the old metal working methods that were used by smiths such as these I have mentioned.
Welding, for example, was a bit more of a challenge than it is today, with our highly-developed electric welders and convenient acetylene welders using pressurized bottled gases.
Looking back to the earlydays, metal to be welded was heated in a forge. A forge is an apparatus set up for delivering a blast of air into burning fuel, coal or coke, to concentrate and tremendously increase the heat on the metal. The metal was heated until the surfaces to be welded were nearly white hot. Then the pieces were placed in position together on an anvil, and the blacksmith hammered them together with a heavy hammer until they were soundly welded. To some of our young welders of today, that might sound a bit primitive, but actually it worked quite well.
The welds were strong;
considerably stronger than a poorly executed electric weld of today, which might just deposit a shallow pool of molten metal between two pieces.
I am told by my friend Charles Lee that Shorty Hall had an early sort of acetylene welder. I hadnever known about such a welder. It seems that this apparatus used carbide to generate acetylene gas to fire the welder. I don’t yet understand just how the acetylene was collected, or just how it was fed to the welder tips and combined with oxygen, but it seems that Shorty used the old apparatus successfully for years. I am told that when Shorty grew older and retired from repair work, his old acetylene welder apparatus was obtained by Bill Patterson. The rest of the story goes that Bill Patterson and J.W. Jordanwere experimenting with the thing, and it blew up on them. I haven’t yet had an opportunity to verify all the facts with all parties, but it sounds like a likely story!
They just don’t make welders like they used to - thank goodness!
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history.
He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Community, Pages 5 on 05/30/2012