My Uncle Orin

Orin Norton, Edgartown's last blacksmith, source unknown, probably taken between 1950-60.(Thank you, ALM, for sending it)


When I was a little girl knocking around my Uncle Orin's farm - way up the hill, at the end of what is now called Norton Orchard Road -  where my grandmother, mother, brother, and I were often invited to pick corn and other vegetables that were in abundance; or wandering around down on Dock street, in and out of his blacksmith shop (where he once admonished me for coming into his shrapnel-covered floors barefoot but gave me a dime for penny candy anyway), I had no idea that he was a living treasure, Edgartown's last blacksmith who would be written up in National Geographic, and reminisced over so fondly; our own living legend, bent over his forge, crafting scallop drags, quahog rakes, anchors, ploughshares - every piece of metal that we needed for our farming and fishing lives.

How could we, as kids, have known these things? If we had, we'd have paid much closer attention.