The Saddle Makers Shop

The Saddle Maker's shop was an interesting one.  There was 8 feet deep of sand deposited by the river on parts of his property, that took the City of Loveland a full day with 3 large front end loaders to remove, just so he could get to his shop.  Monday and Wednesday were tough for us.  

There is no way to describe how much tools and materials there is in a Saddle Maker's shop, and each one was important to him.  When we had to deconstruct part of the shop to get to wet drywall and insulation it literally took a dedicated team an entire day to do that one part.  This Saddle Maker knows how to build things to LAST.  Probably why his shop is still standing!  Most places we just smash with a hammer and it falls apart, not this place!  

But that's not the story here.  The story is the man himself.  The Saddle Maker is 72 years old, but has lived a hard, working mans life, so looks, walks and talks older. I noticed he wasn't having much of a hard time keeping his chin up through all this, mentioned it to him.  His response was "Wellllll, I was raised not to complain.  Something like this happens, you just pull up your boots and get to work!"  I knew he had put a story out in the local paper that "If anybody finds any of my tools down river, please return them." So I asked him, Rusty is there something special you're missing that we could try to find for you.  He was hesitant as he didn't want to put us to "any trouble" but I finally got him to request we find just two things, the first saddle he had made 45 years ago, and his wife's saddle.  He believed they were in this shed leaning over and buried in 3 feet of river silt.  I said "no problem!" It took 3 strong men 3 hours to remove large tree limbs just to get in the place, but at the end of the day they told me they had found them.  I found Rusty, pulled him aside, said "We found your saddles."  For the first time I saw emotion show by him.  His knees buckled, blood drained from his face, and his eye welled with tears.  He just said "You found them?!" He couldn't believe it.  Apparently only the horn of one saddle was sticking through the sand.  Rusty quickly gained his composure and just said, "Well. Thank you."

 

What 6.8 is doing out here is not working on property, or a flooded shop, or a molded over home.  What we're doing is working on people's hearts.

- written by Robert Hard, Project Leader