Anvil Adventure — Home is where the heart is (#2)
Anvil Adventure — Home is where the heart is (#2)
Another lighthearted story about a heavy object.
“I saw that this rusty 82-year-old blacksmith wasn’t fucking around.”
I was scrolling the Dutch variant of Craigslist looking for an anvil. My once-in-a-blue-moon blacksmithing hobby had become something I was doing more and more, and I was sick of using my one-foot-long railroad piece as my anvil. Scrolling craigslist for many days, unable to find a big anvil (blacksmithing has gone a bit out of vogue over the last 100 years and all that), I finally found a listing. The listing said, “heavy anvil for €300” (that’s ~$330 for you US and intl. folks). There was only a phone number, an unclear picture, and a rough location on the map (middle of Redneck-nowhere).
I called the number and introduced myself as Jan. (The Dutch equivalent of John, finding that over the years, sadly, I got better deals when introducing myself with a Dutch-sounding name rather than with my real name.)
The guy who picked up and sold the anvil introduced himself as Gert. Gert and I had a short chat in which he made sure I’d bring friends to help carry the anvil because he said it was “really heavy, probably 150kg.” The cheapskate I was at the time—Gigi and I had just bought our first house a month before—I even negotiated the price down to €275.
Then I convinced my friends, Ron and Sven, to help me get the anvil. I still smile as I think back to calling them that afternoon. As they both, on separate phone calls, laughed out loud when I asked them to help me get an anvil. You see, only a month before, the two of them had helped me and Gigi move house.
That night, I loaded four 25kg bags of dry plaster into the small frost-covered utility trailer that Ron had taken with him behind his tiny red Toyota Scarlett. (Oh God, was I happy that I had taken those bags later that night.) Then, after Sven had come biking up the driveway, we quickly left in good spirit for the least populated area in the Netherlands. Ron driving, me on Ron’s iPhone guiding us through the dark, and Sven in the back, entertaining us with stories about his recent hookups.
Oh yes, Sven was the ladies’ man, and he had a special love for women of the ‘€300 anvil’ type… which, in his own words, made him especially fit for tonight’s goal of helping “pick up that ol’ girl.”
Gert and his anvil
We drive up to Gert’s supposed farm—Apple maps had us go on a goose chase once before that evening—we park, get out, and walk toward the front of the farmhouse.
I ring the bell. Nothing. I ring again. Still no response, and as I think, “What the hell, we came all this way, and there’s no one home?!” we decide to walk to the back of the farmhouse to see if someone’s there.
As we come to the side of the house, I see a tiny window with light behind it. I look through it and see a big man sitting alone on a tiny chair at a small kitchen table, eating a measly dinner. I decide to knock. But the man doesn’t respond. So I knock again, more loudly this time, and the man quickly straightens his back in reflex and then squints at the window. As it’s so dark outside, I assume he can’t see me, and so to be sure, I rap the window twice more to let him know there is someone there.
A moment later a door a few meters away from us creaks open, and I see what I can only describe as a small giant. Chest like a gorilla, arms like tree trunks, grey hair to his neck with on top a little balding, and a short grey-white beard.
“Hi boys, I’m Gert. You coming for the anvil, right?”
I nod and think, “That Germanic barbarian name definitely checks out.” (Gert is derived from Ger, an old Germanic name that means both “spear” and” strong/sturdy.”)
I shake hands with Gert and introduce myself as Jan, making Gert look at me a little funny. I immediately think he knows I’m lying about my name, but after a short pause, he loudly says, “Can you repeat that a bit louder? I can’t hear very well.” So I repeat my name, and Gert nods, after which Ron and Sven also shake hands with Gert.
As Gert points us in the direction of where the anvil should be, I notice Gert doesn’t seem worried in the slightest about three grown men coming to his middle-of-nowhere farm at night. So we walk in the direction Gert pointed, but we only see darkness. Then Gert flicks a switch, and his whole property is lit with floodlights like a football stadium.
Everywhere we look, there is metal stuff. Big sea containers, scrap metal, old cars, old bikes, and there, right in the middle of a small shed with opens sides, is the anvil.
It’s m***** f****** big.
I feel both excited and anxious. I feel excited because I instantly understand this old guy didn’t market his anvil that well on craigslist; he could’ve asked way more for this piece of 1900s engineering. On the other hand, I feel anxious because I’m afraid we won’t be able to take it with us as it’s three and a half feet long and probably weighs around 600 pounds.
Gert walks up to us and says he used this big boy as his main workhorse in the past. “So you’re a blacksmith?” I ask Gert. “In the past, I was, son. But now, at 82, I’m a little too old for that.”1 Gert replied while staring blankly in the distance for a moment. Sven, Ron, and I look at each other, astonished; we’re all thinking the same thing, 82 years old? I’m thinking this guy stands here like a 60-year-old, just retired, strongman.
“I tried to sell this one, but everyone who came down here gave up on taking it with them. So that’s why I told you to bring friends.” Gert continued with a wide grin on his face.
“Maybe it’s better if we just go home; we’re not gonna get that thing out of here, I think.” Ron silently says to me. I shake my head and say we’re going to try anyway. So Sven and I walk up to the anvil. “Let’s lift Bertha,” Sven says, and we try to lift it. But no movement in ‘Bertha.’
Gert says he’ll get two beams to put under each tip of the anvil so we can lift with the four of us. So after he comes back with two 2x3s, and we put one under each of the anvil’s ends, we all take a squat position—I see that this rusty 82-year-old blacksmith wasn’t fucking around.
We start lifting, and the anvil goes up a bit, but before I can feel a moment of relief, there is a loud ‘CRACK!’ One of the 2x3s snapped in half, and the anvil dropped back onto its pedestal. Luckily, no one got hurt, but Gert says he doesn’t have any 2x3s left.
Ron proposes we back up his trailer to the anvil to then try to lift the anvil with two bands he took, bands usually used for pulling trees out of the ground including their roots.
So after Gert grabbed some tiles and put them underneath the end of the trailer, Ron and I each wrapped a band around our shoulders and got ready. One foot on the trailer, one foot on the anvil stand, grabbing the bands tightly with our hands, we start deadlifting with all our might. And lo and behold, the anvil raises about half an inch, enough to reach the edge of the trailer. Ron and I pause, the anvil partially leaning on the trailer and partially on its stand. Then Sven says he’ll push when we lift again, so again Ron and I raise the anvil, and this time Sven and Gert push from the back. The anvil starts sliding onto the trailer, and after three more of these ‘lift-pushes’, the anvil is fully in the trailer.
After fastening the anvil and its 100-pound pedestal and putting the bags of dry plaster around them to keep them from sliding, I turn to Gert to pay him in cash. I have six bills of €50, but Gert doesn’t have €25 in change, but he says he does have an old 25-pound sledgehammer he’s willing to sell me for that €25. He grabs it from out of one of the sea containers, I pay him €300 for the best deal of my life, and we’re off.
Road home & unloading
We’re driving for a few minutes, but the small Toyota is doing “weird” Ron says from behind the wheel, “I can’t steer that well, maybe it’s because there’s frost on the road?” Sven and I look at each other and then out of the window to the back and see that the front of the trailer is way higher than its end. The anvil-trailer combo is lifting the back of the car slightly because the weight of the trailer is distributed towards the back too much. Ron, upon hearing Sven describe “Bertha is leaning back,” immediately slows down and comes to a stop along the side of the road. We redistribute the weight, me being so glad I took those dry plaster bags, tighten the anvil a bit more, and drive off to my house, slowly.
After what seemed an eternity, we finally arrive at my house and decouple the trailer and push it through the vegetable garden bed (it was winter, so it was fine) all the way to the back of our garden. Then we decide to lift the anvil off the trailer in the same way as with did at Gert, but then in the opposite direction. So we drop the heavy anvil pedestal where I want the anvil to come.
But then I notice the pedestal has a small metal pin in the middle pointing up. It is a little less than an inch in diameter, and I guess I missed it when lifting the anvil at Gert’s farm. It’s to keep the anvil from sliding around on the pedestal, of course, and I can only assume the bottom of the anvil has a hole that fits the pin.
Ron and I deadlift with those tree-pulling bands again, and with Sven pushing, we get it from the trailer onto the pedestal aiming for—but not precisely hitting—the pin. So the anvil is leaning with its flat bottom on the pin while the edge is leaning on the pedestal, Ron and me holding on tight.
“Shit, how do we get it on that pin now?” Ron says. And Sven immediately replies, “I’ll just feel under her.” while leaning over and putting his hand underneath 600-pound Bertha.
“Are you crazy, man? If it falls, your hand is gone!” I say to Sven with my teeth clenched holding the bands tight to keep the anvil from tipping over. “Don’t worry, just keep lifting guys; it’s OK. Ah, there’s the hole, just half an inch left of the pin.”
Sven pulls his hand away, and Ron and I tip-turn the anvil in the direction Sven indicated, and with a muffled ‘thump,’ the anvil comes to a rest on its pedestal.
Bertha still stands in my wife’s garden bed, 10 years later. And before I had kids, I forged many things on her, but now she’s as rusty and unused as when we went and got it. As our garden is nowadays closed off from the road, the deal of my life has mostly become a €3000 garden ornament that can only be stolen by a helicopter.
I wonder if I can convince Ron and Sven to help me move her again whenever we move house…
Thanks for reading this massive piece! I hope you enjoyed it. And if you did, please share it with anyone you know who would love a lighthearted story like this.
Sincerely,
Jibran
I always enjoy telling this story to people who ask about the anvil in our garden bed. Maybe that’s why I remembered all the details to a T. I know I remembered the details correctly because after I finished the first draft of this Substack I went to see if I could find anything around this anvil adventure in my email inbox. Maybe a craigslist listing or something. And lo and behold, I found something!
It seems that on that same night Ron, Sven, and I picked up the anvil, in my excitement I wrote an email to my brother, Kemil, who had just emigrated to the UK. In the email I told this story to him, sharing the many details that I also wrote in my first draft, like the 82-year-old blacksmith and the price I paid for the anvil. Maybe because I wrote it down in an email, I remembered it all that time? Who knows! One thing I do know is that the anvil will most likely outlast me.
Enjoyed this thoroughly Jibran. You have a gift for evocative storytelling. What a whimsical and endearing adventure! The anvil is a wonderful protagonist with a charm of its own!