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. 

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The We Are Chaffee: Looking Upstream podcast is a collaboration with the Chaffee County Departments of Public Health and Housing, and is supported by the Colorado Public Health & Environment: Office of Health Disparities. 

You can see show notes, read the show transcript, and learn more about the Looking Upstream podcast (and related storytelling initiatives) at wearechaffee.org, and on Instagram and Facebook @wearechaffee.

We Are Chaffee (wearechaffee.org) partners with KHEN radio (khen.org) in Salida, Colo., for local broadcasting of the Looking Upstream podcast.

Credits

Adam Williams, host, producer and photographer; Jon Pray, engineer and producer; Andrea Carlstrom, Director of Chaffee County Public Health and Environment; Lisa Martin, We Are Chaffee Community Advocacy Coordinator; and Heather Gorby, graphic and web design.