DADDY’S SHOP

It was nice to go out to the shop, when Daddy was working on something there. Sometimes he let Jenny turn the handle on the forge, when he sharpened plow lays. The faster she turned the handle, the more the fire roared as the breeze fanned the flames. She loved to watch Daddy put a piece of iron in the fire. It would be white hot as he took it from the forge with giant tongs and placed it on the anvil and pounded with a big mallet. It made a lovely ringing sound, a clear rich tone. Next it would glow red, which was very pretty, but didn’t last long, then then it turned gray after he plunged it into a pail of water, where it made a hissing sound where it became strong tempered steel .

Once when Jenny was out in the shop, he moved a sack of cotton seed meal and there was a nest of pink baby mice in the corner where it had stood. He called the dog, who finished them off in two gulps, tails and all. He showed Jenny how much the dog liked cotton seed meal. He kept it in a big wooden box in the corner of the shop or garage, as they sometimes called it, because they kept the car in half of it. He would take the wooden lid off and the dog would dive in, and emerge snuffing, but grinning, his nose and jaws powdered with the bright yellow meal.

Sometimes Daddy put a piece of wood in the vise and planed it smooth with his plane. Sometimes he needed to drill holes in metal. Jenny would gather the sharp spiraled metal shavings and arrange them into patterns.

Last night there had been a pounding rain. This morning the ground in the driveway was packed hard, but the fields were muddy, so work in the fields would be delayed for a few days and Daddy could do other things. Jenny could hear Daddy pounding and hammering in the shop, as she ate breakfast. As soon as she finished, she meandered out in that direction.

“You’re just the person I was looking for,” he told her, as she stepped over the threshold into the shop. Jenny felt happily important.

“Look at this,” he said and picked up a u-shaped bar of iron about as long as his hand. He held it over the box of nails. A bunch of them clung to the U and to each other like the people in “Silly Jack,” who, as they touched Jack, and then in a chain, each other, could not let go. It made the sad princess in the story laugh. Jenny had to laugh at the nails as she thought of that story. Daddy showed how it would pick up bits of metal from the work bench.

“What makes it do that?” Jenny wanted to know.

“It’s made of iron and attracts other iron.”

He let Jenny use the magnet. She tried it on some nails and was delighted. She tried it on some heavy bolts, but it wouldn’t pick them up. She looked at the anvil.

“Will it pick that up?”

“Try it and see.”

Jenny put the magnet to the anvil, but of course her little magnet wasn’t strong enough to pick up anything that heavy. Instead the anvil moved the magnet to it. She realized that her little tiny magnet wasn’t nearly strong enough to pick up anything so heavy. That would be like a mouse trying to lift an elephant.

“Now, you and I have work to do,” Daddy said and he got an old bucket and a much bigger magnet attached to a long piece of wood for himself to use. “We’re going to pick up nails from the yard and driveway, so they can’t get into the tires.”

The heavy rain had washed away the top of the ground so that many nails were exposed. Daddy could pick up a lot of nails with his big magnet. The nails seemed to jump up to meet it. Jenny made lots of trips to the nail bucket, pulling off the nails from her magnet and letting them fall into the bucket with a clink,

“Am I a good helper?” she asked him several times.

“You sure are. I don’t know how I’d get along without you.”