Back When ~ Old Iron is Phillip Smith’s Gold

Lifelong Valley Home resident Phillip Smith and and his wife Angela have been participants and witnesses to that sharing tradition. Not only is the Smith farm a working farm for the bi-vocational Smiths, their farm is often visited by children who have never experience rural life.

Most likely the first things they would notice are the unique Smith cats. Stubbs, who can whip nearly every dog in the community, readily rolls over for a tummy rub, while Charlie has personal issues and keeps his distance. You’ll next greet the extremely spoiled Smith goats, Bill, Sonny, Caesar and Tippy. Extremely tame, the goats can leave their pen to munch on fallen leaves in the front yard, without going near the road, and then head to the back pasture. After getting their fill, they know the sound of their mom Angela’s car returning home and rush to see if she’s brought them a treat of French fries. The leader of the goats, Tippy, stays closest to Angela until she leads the others back to their safe and comfortable pen.

The back pasture is shared by horses Velvet and Doc, along with Cricket the donkey. The equines can expect a daily visitor when Peppa the pot-bellied pig leaves her home a few houses away to travel across the fields to the horse pasture where Peppa stays as close as possible to Cricket. The odd and loving pair even share naps together and the affection between the two is obvious.

Born in 1977, Phillip has an older brother, Preston and is the son of John and Jeanette Sumner Smith. Vietnam vet father John combined his job as a bank officer with working as a serious farmer, while mom Jeanette would be the long time manager of the Union Heights cafeteria.

After attending the “old” Alpha Elementary, Phillip would graduate from West High in 1995 before heading to WSCC to become an EMT. He would love that job and would make many close friends, but after six years on an ambulance, he would move to Old Dominion as a trucker, where he’s worked for over two decades.

Angela is the daughter of Bean Station’s Earl and Joan Lamb. After graduating from Rutledge High School in 1993, she would graduate from Lincoln Memorial University before taking a job as a legal assistant with attorneys Carroll, Anderson and Foust. Phillip had been parked in the present Rural King parking lot when a mutual friend brought the two together. After dating for 10 years, they were married at the Rose Center.

During our visit, neighbor Bill Toby had dropped by to check on the Smiths. Phillip has witnessed the day when local neighbors quickly stepped In to help other neighbors, most often without being asked.

“My dad and Ron Byrd had been best friends”, Phillip explained. “Ron had convinced Dad to move to Valley Home Road. Ron and Cheryl Byrd, Frank Oakberg, Scott and Gail Rines, Tim and Deena Roach, Scotty and Gail Rines, Larry and Donna Templin, and Junior Stansberry are just some of the neighbors who help each other out. Dad had come home from work one day and Tim Roach already had Dad’s hay baled.

“Steve Chandler doesn’t live in the neighborhood, but is always around to help out. He can fix someone’s tractor just by letting them hold their phone to the running engine and he once put a diesel motor into a Ford Ranger pickup and it was soon getting nearly 100 miles per gallon of fuel. If I had a tree to cut up, Bill Toby would show up to help cut it. He’s taught me a lot about small engines by standing over me and telling me what I need to do. William David ‘Sonny’ Carter can tell you the history of the Valley Home area. These are just some of the neighbors who help each other out. We’re blessed with good neighbors.”

Phillip has a unique hobby in collecting old and interesting tools that he displays all along the walls and on the covered outside of his work barn.

“Granddaddy Ardeth Sumner gave me the first old Ford wrench for this collection”, he started. “Now I have hundreds of them. Old metal feels better and works better. There’s no comparison. The story behind this old stuff fascinates me. We live in a throw-away society now. When a tool is damaged, we throw it away and go get another one. I still have my granddaddy’s and great-granddaddy’s old Ford tractors. You can see that someone has fixed this old screwdriver by carving into the handle and wrapping it with strong wire. Even the wire repair shows a lot of wear.”

An old wooden shoe vice was from the day when shoes were made at home, or by a local cobbler, while an old post hole digger was twisted into the ground instead of being thrust into the ground like the modern version. Phillip picked up an ancient pipe wrench and added that throughout time others had come up with better pipe wrenches, which was also the case with a very early ratchet wrench. An ancient soldering iron that was fueled by carbide was displayed by a handy one-man potato planter.

A shovel with a 9-foot handle had been used for digging holes for telephone poles. What I first considered a joke was found to be true when Phillip held up a Left-handed shovel, which had a twisted handle to help right handed men shovel coal quicker. Another impressive article was a very early push-type lawn mower which had a small self-sharpening rotator blade, which Phillip demonstrated.

As we finished our visit, we went outside to where Angela was feeding French fries to her goats.

“I’ve got 13 kids,” she ended, “but they all have hooves or paws.”