A good job, only hard on the back. That's the reason I didn't take it up. It was too hard on the back, holding horses up to nail eight nails in their feet. Long hours, yes, from the time you'd get up in the morning till sometimes 10,11 o'clock at night. People would look for something to be done, especially in the wintertime; lost a shoe or something, broke a sleigh.... Very few people shod in the summertime. Of course, the horse that they were driving, they kept shod all the time. But a work horse, he went around barefoot. [The shop was] a smoky place. The coal you know. You could hardly see the blacksmith in it, when you go in there, with the smoke. Hard on the lungs too. I worked in the forge with my father for years. Oh, I'd grasp the horse's feet, and clinch the shoes and rasp them, trim them up for him. But I never nailed the shoes on nor made shoes. I cut iron with him and pumped the bellows to sharpen bolts for the Wood Island breakwater down there, and haul them down. Haul the iron home from the wharf; used to come across in vessels. Haul it home and cut it up in two-foot lengths... and sharpen one end of it, [make] a head on the other for to drive it in with. There'd be a crowd there, slippy day in the winter. I've seen my father's forge full and the yard full of horses, slippy spell in the wintertime you know. They'd be skating coming there and they'd have to get shod to get home. Some of them would come in the morning; they wouldn' t get home till evening. King of the Road? I don't know what date I seen the first car. I was down at Belle River working at MacLaren's1, I guess it was. We were all at MacLaren's platform there. I guess there was 15 or 20 of us down there, young fellas. We seen this light swaying in the sky, coming through Flat River , and we were wondering what in the hell it was. At last it came up over the hill at the butter factory - that was the cheese factory then. It came up, oh, and it came down, and it was into the turn at Riley's Corner there, went into Willie Emery 's. He came out and opened the barn doors and it drove in. Of course we were curiosity and went to the barn with the doors open to see what was going on. A big car, gray, a big Buick with yella wheels on it... . That was the first car that came over the road. 1. MacLaren operated a store at Belle River corner. George Young 171