My paternal Grandfather was a blacksmith. I wish I could have known the blonde-haired boy who, in his grade school years, was apprenticed to a shop in the Highland Park neighborhood. That was far in the past and all I could do in my grade school years was stand in the doorway of his shop and marvel at the stocky, gray-haired man busy at his workbench. I had always heard of him, “He can make anything.”
“You run along and play” he would tell me when he turned and saw me standing there.
I still hear his voice and still remember how much I would rather stand and watch him be busy in that shop that smelled of oil and old lumber.
He had built that shop behind his home at 4435 Crittenden Drive. After building the shop, he added on to the back of his home and also built a smokehouse. Sadly, the Expressway took the property but the house, shop, smokehouse, and garden live on in memories of those who spent their summers and Sundays playing in Highland Park.
Sundays were always spent on Crittenden when I was young. My mother would term it “Going over home” and we would make the trip sitting on a bench in the back of our Grocery Truck which was a precursor to a modern SUV.
I sometimes think that while Jacob F. Link stood at his workshop bench, he managed to hammer a “make stuff” factor into his DNA because some of his descendants, to the dismay of neighbors, friends, and loved ones, are compelled to create an elaborate world of their own choosing that stretches far beyond the boundaries of Highland Park.