At the Woodland Oaks Ranch in San Dimas, the welcoming committee is out. Hens and roosters, clucking and crowing in the morning light, are the first ambassadors, followed by Milo the Lab, Julia the Corgi and Sparkle the goat.
Digger, a chestnut gelding, sticks his head out of a barn and watches as John Gorton steps out of a white Ford F-150 pickup and lifts the side panels and rear door of the shell, revealing racks of horse shoes and a clutter of tools. He pulls on chaps, hefts an anvil onto a knee-high table and fills a bucket with water.
"Hi, Digger, how you doing?" He stands in the doorway of the barn, halter in hand. "Let's go get some new shoes on you."
He has a calm voice and a quick but easy manner. Little about him is startling. Gorton can sneak around horses better than most and has been shoeing them for 36 years.
Like pool cleaners and gardeners, he is part of the wandering workforce of Southern California, and in a region better known for its more cosmopolitan pleasures, his trade occupies a vital, if gritty, niche.
Horseshoeing may be a throw-back to the past, but so too are the rural neighborhoods and communities that Gorton visits: nooks and crannies in the region's topography, forgotten easements and municipalities where horses are still accepted.
Out here paved roads turn to dust. The rattle of the city doesn't quite disappear. It recedes, and when Gorton puts heat to metal, hammer to anvil, the digital world goes analog and when he stands beside a horse, his senses quicken to the flicker of the ears, the darkness in the eyes, a wildness that is beautiful, dangerous and life-affecting.
He keeps to a tight skein of freeways and sees about 200 clients in the San Gabriel Valley, the Puente Hills and the Inland Empire, all within 30 miles of his home in Chino. He built his business through word of mouth, making the rounds of stables at 17 and sloughing off the question, "Where's your dad?"
He's 53 now, and clients like Tonia Looker, who owns Digger and 11 other horses at Woodland Oaks, wouldn't trust her animals to anyone else.
Not all of his customers are pricey champions in the jumping circuit like Digger, who is valued in the low six figures. Just the day before, Gorton spent the morning at the L-S Ranch in Whittier. The horses there may not offer the same return on investment but they get the same care.
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To understand the farrier's trade, you need to realize that the horse's hoof is a shock absorber that evolved almost 50 million years ago. Its development allowed the species to grow big and to run fast. Domesticity, however, has not been easy on the hoof. In confined settings, it doesn't wear naturally and needs to be trimmed or shod every six to seven weeks.
One horse takes about an hour, and on a busy day Gorton can get to six. If he has to do eight, he wakes up the next day back aching, hips and knees sore.
The trade has a sharp attrition rate; most farriers quit after five years. The work is physically challenging, hours spent stooped over, horses' legs pinned between knees. They have to negotiate the whims of horse owners, know how to use their hands and run a business that in a good year can bring in close to $100,000.
Gorton often partners with other farriers. He likes the company and the advice. Shoeing a horse is more than hammering a bar of iron onto a hoof. It requires understanding the complex relationship between the hoof and the leg, and Gorton doesn't pretend to know everything.
That morning at L-S, Clem Crum joins him. Tucked between the 605 Freeway and a Metrolink rail line, the L-S — that's "L Bar S," as if it were the brand for a cattle ranch — sits at the end of a road just beyond warehouses and storage yards. Scarlet trumpet vine carpets the sound wall, and the whoosh of traffic is inescapable.
Gorton and Crum head to the stalls to grab two quarter horses. They walk past a red three-story barn that houses the office and a water tank, covered with a trompe l'oeil of a countryside that would make Grandma Moses proud. Horses gambol through green pastures divided by country roads.
A little more than 50 years ago, this scene might not have been so fanciful. Before development overtook the Puente Hills, L-S and a broad swath of surrounding land was owned by one of the region's largest dairy farms, itself just a few land barons removed from California's Spanish heritage.
Gorton and Crum tie the horses by the truck. With long-handled nippers they trim the hooves' front edges. Clem pares the sole with a short curved knife, and Gorton lights the propane burner to the forge.
Both men learned shoeing at Valley Vocational Center in the City of Industry. While other students studied auto mechanics, welding and appliance repair, Gorton applied himself to equine anatomy and the dynamics of the forge. His teachers were "half horse," and each hammer strike was a lesson from generations past.
