"Old local blacksmith" joke
An old blacksmith relized he was soon going to quit working so hard. He picked out a strong young man to become his apprentice. The old fellow was crabby and exacting. "Don't ask me a lot of questions," he told the boy. "Just do whatever I tell you to do." One day the old blacksmith took an iron out of the forge and laid it on the anvil. "Get the hammer over there," he said. "When I nod my head, hit it real good and hard." Now the town is looking for a new blacksmith.
This urban legend is said to happen to the "King of Shoemakers" Tomas Bata. (He was as important to Czech industry as Henry Ford I to the American one.)
Bata was driving through the country and suddenly he realized that something was wrong with his car. Fearing more...
My grandfather worked in a blacksmith shop when he was a boy, and he used to tell me, when I was a little boy myself, how he had toughened himself up so he could stand the rigors of blacksmithing.
One story was how he had developed his arm and shoulder muscles. He more...