PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: The first time we visited, the gate was wide open. Neither of us had seen an industrial forge before. They looked Wagnerian in their grim grandeur, and we felt dwarfed. We’d seen presses but not like these. I couldn’t quite imagine how their brutality was finessed into usable products or what those products might be.
Today I met a fellow along the Farmington Canal who told me he used to work here. I asked what they made. He said, “We made everything,” and carefully pointed out some of the shops he had worked in and other places he’d worked. It seems common among the retired machinists and metal workers, the pride in what they did. So I let him reminisce - it was a privilege listening - before I pressed my question. He finally suggested, “elbow joints,” and I managed to understand that they received blanks and there were forms, and I’m still having trouble imagining the stamping of elbow joints, and I suspect the truth is, one really had to be there amid the racket and the grease and the soot, but standing inside the sanctuary helped me understand. The dirt underfoot was real.
What is the importance of knowing that elbow joints were once forged on Wagnerian presses in two sheds along the canal that was built in 1826 from Massachusetts to Long Island Sound? What is added by the experience of being there and seeing them? How does it enrich living there to know how Southington helped forge our world?
