Alpheus “Alf” Rudd, 10th-generation master blacksmith, on times gone by, the value of old-world skills and self-sufficiency, and ‘Forged in Fire’

In this episode of the We Are Chaffee: Looking Upstream podcast, Adam Williams talks with Alpheus “Alf” Rudd, a master blacksmith with a family lineage in the trade, dating back to at least the 1600s.

Adam and Alf take a ride through history and stories of a time gone by, personal, family and otherwise. Alf was abandoned by his father from the get-go, and his stepfather was lost at sea in the Pacific during World War II when Alf was only a baby. He has stunningly vivid memories of being run over by a car driven by his grandfather when he was six years old. His mom was a Rosy the Riveter type, a welder who died when Alf was 10.

And there’s more. But Alf focuses on the grandparents who raised him, teaching him all the life skills that an old-world agrarian family and community in the Deep South had to teach at the time.