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Blacks Forge
For one year my Family and I lived on the bottom floor of the old Jail house in Washington Arkansas... I became very close friends with all the old timers that grew up there as kids to manhood ... these were Farm people ... deep southern Farm Boys... they would take me fishing at their Farm ponds and tell me the stories they had heard when they were Kids
around 1910 or so.... these all related to the James Black legend..... They took me up to Arkadelphia Arkansas and we talked with old folks that was related to James Black....
I wanted to know this James Black and the Jim Bowie connection.... Making Bowie knives was my profession and I felt I owed it to find out.......... Well, in 1973 I moved away from that part of the country and my conclusion was and still is --- James Black was more a Silversmith than a Blacksmith.... He had no secret Tempering processes... Proof--- no provable Black's Knife Blade is around in any Museum or private ownership.... Yes, I know, just because there are no knives now, doesn't prove that there never was any... I'm a realist... There were many a night I spent out there in that old Cemetary where he was buried with a six pack of Beer and my old Guitar playing to all those Ghosts trying to get one to tell me the truth..... I became a skeptic.... But I still want see the Romantic side of History so what's a man to do ?? Print the Legend not the Man......Lloyd
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Lloyd Hale
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