JOY ALONG THE WAY: BE RED-HOT WITH A PURPOSE; LUKEWARM IS FOR SISSIES

New Year! Clean page! New beginning! Sound good? It is. Especially the New beginning.

It would be a sad circumstance if we had to forever drag behind us all the mistakes, bad judgments, faulty behavior of the past. Any day, hour, minute, we can declare a New beginning. But New Year's Day seems so appropriate. You have a lot of friends thinking of what they are going to jettison and what new goals to set.

I have kept journals for years. And looking back at January entries, I find this recurring one: Don't let my eyes and mind wander when someone is talking to me, nor when I'm driving, nor when I'm reading.

More "nors" have been added as time passes. More recently there has been, nor when I'm listening, typing, taking medicine, going up and down steps, walking on ice.

Nor, in 1995, do I want to succumb to lukewarmness in the matter of aspirations, projects, goals, my niche in the societal maelstrom of the 1990s.

To stay lukewarm mentally is to be hard to shape into anything useful. This is a lesson I learned in the blacksmith shop.

Yes, Lou and I, in early resumes would add under "previous experience," blacksmith. It got attention.

The little gray shed was just sitting there, vacant, when we moved to the farm.

"It will be just right for my blacksmith shop," Dad said. He had owned a livery stable and blacksmith shop in town but progress in transportation necessitated change.

Up went the tool shelves. In went the fire bin and bellows. The anvil was sturdily secured on a platform in the center of the dirt floor with water tub nearby.

Lou and I, were fascinated with the furnishings. A row of factory-made, different-sized horseshoes hung all around the top of the walls, as well as metal rims for wheels. We loved the inimitable sound the anvil made when struck with a hammer. So solid.

Most of all we loved to turn the bellows wheel which made the fire in the bin burn brighter. We were never allowed to build a fire and play in it, but tried our best to hammer the cold horseshoes into different shapes.

"They have to be red-hot with purpose," Dad told us.

"With purpose?" we asked.

"In order to be malleable, metal has to be willing to change and to make it willing, you heat it."

"Malleable?"

"That means to soften it so that a hammer can pound it into a different and suitable shape."

He proceeded to show us with a strip of metal. Transferring it, red-hot,from the fire bin, he hammered it into a certain shape. After cooling it in the water, he would reheat it and shape it into something else.

"Heat and hammering will do it every time," he declared. So, heat my brains, you think-tankers, you pundits. You talking heads. I'm listening. Don't let me stay lukewarm. But I'll do the hammering after I've plucked from the fire the red-hot ideas I choose to shape into hard action.

If they don't work out, I can always declare a new beginning, put them back into the fire and try again. A hot fire that is, not lukewarm.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.