Idle hands forge troubles for blacksmith

SOMETIMES, when we had nothing to buy from the shops we wandered along the main street and looked in the shop windows.
Or we would go and stand at the slip rails of the old blacksmith’s shop and farrier’s shed on the corner of Langhorne and Walker streets, which were next to the coach builders in Walker Street.
We watched the smithy at his forge making the horseshoes and fitting them to the many types of horses from saddle and light harness to medium and heavy draft horses.
Draughthorses were used to pull the large four-wheeled delivery wagons around Dandenong to deliver beer to the hotels or to pull the tip drays of the council contractors.
We would then walk a little further along Langhorne Street to the section of the building nearest to the old Memorial Hall land, where the wheelwright had his shop and forge.
We watched him making wooden-spoked wheels and fitting steel rims to them.
He made the lighter carriage wheels or the wheels of the spring carts which were the horse-drawn equivalent of today’s tradesman’s ute.
Some of the better carriages, jinkers and buggies had solid rubber tyres on their rims but they mostly appeared after sealed bitumen roads were introduced.
At that time, the blacksmiths and their customers talked to us kids as they knew we were well-behaved and they probably knew mum and dad.
I loved to watch the smaller forgings while still red hot, being dipped into a barrel of water to cool and harden.
But they were suspicious of some of the big kids in town.
More especially after an incident that happened when we were returning from concert practice at the old town hall.
On the Walker Street wall of the farrier’s shed there was a window opening with a wooden door.
It was there to create cross ventilation between the sliprail opening and around the farrier’s forge.
In the summer months, when the forge was continually being pumped with the bellows or the smaller portable one was being wound by hand, the heat for the workers was intense.
Because of his anti-social behaviour, one of the big kids was banned from the concert and from the town hall.
This was what he had been aiming for as it left him free to roam the streets.
He had a bunch of large crackers from Mr Ewart’s newsagency. Knowing this kid, he more than likely pinched them.
As he walked past the opening, he threw the crackers into the smouldering forge. By the time he got past the sliprails on the Langhorne Street corner, they had gone off in a series of loud explosions.
This scared the hell out of the leather-aproned farrier, who had just turned his back on the forge, and caused the horse he had just shod to snap its halter and bolt in panic.
It jumped the sliprail and headed up Walker Street.
Just as the horse bolted, old Mr Handley was coming out the gate of his house and when he attempted to stop it he was nearly bowled over.