Frequently, visitors stop at the little white frame house on the edge of Broughton to watch Richardson demonstrate his craft. He always seems delighted at this attention but seldom lets conversation interfere with his work, and basket making is work. By steady application, the old man is able to turn out three baskets a day; but it is not every day that he feels up to such a schedule. There are many tricks to the trade of basket making as there are in other occupations. Grandpa Richardson gladly explains each step as he works.

To begin with, he points out, it is important to have the proper kind of wood for weaving the baskets ash, hickory, or white oak can be used. Richardson prefers to work with white oak. Th e trees, he goes on to explain, should be felled in the winter when the sap is down, for then the wood seems to be tougher and less subject to decay. It is preferable to choose white oaks not over eight inches in diameter. Trees growing close together on low ground are best, for they are apt to be tall and straight. After the trees are cut, the logs are brought in and stacked until they are needed.

Most of Richardson's preparatory work is done in his shop by the chicken house. Following him out to this workshop in the back yard, the visitor is immediately impressed by the primitive tools that the basket maker uses. Here in a rickety old building with a straw-covered floor, knives, axes and an old shaving horse are all that can be seen. The shaving-horse, a crude vice-like contrivance made of hand-hewed timbers, is itself an antique, having been in service for many years.

He explains that the log is divided into sections, first into halves, then quarters and so forth, with the final division known as bolts. The bolts are fastened in the shaving horse and squared with a drawing knife. They are then rived and shaved into long thin ribbon-like pieces of wood known as splits.A leather patch on the right knee of the old man' s trousers suggests the method at shaving the splits which are held against ;the knee and scraped with a knife. The splits are very thin, several often being made from one ring of growth on a tree. A good log will often supply splits nine feet in length, and in the old days, good trees were not hard to find. Today it is a different story, and shorter splits frequently have to be used. If the splits are used on the day they are cut, they are very pliable. Otherwise, they must be soaked in hot water for awhile before they are suitable for weaving. After the splits are prepared, the actual basket making begins.

Surrounded by completed baskets of various sizes, Samuel Wesley Richardson displays a partly finished one on which he is working. Richardson can make about three baskets a day.

To any practical minded visitor who wonders about the profit in such work, Richardson good naturedly explains, "The largest baskets sell for $2.50, the medium sized ones for $2, the peck baskets for $1.50 and chair bottoms are 75 cents." I weave chair bottoms too, but I'd rather make baskets." He admits that his prices are low in comparison with the market price for such work.

In his younger days, Richardson merely made baskets as a side-line or hobby, for he was a carpenter by trade, a good one, too, as his neighbors will tell you. But now he is old and crippled and unable to do hard work. Pointing to the thick soled shoe on his right foot, he explains that he has been injured a couple of times. The last time he fell from a scaffold and broke his hip. Since then he has not been able to do carpenter work, just make baskets. Thus his hobby has become his trade, and the back porch bears testimony to his industry.

"The market? Oh, that's very good," "Any farmers' store will buy all I can make. They're good egg and feed baskets, you know." Richardson is quite content to work as his father and grandfather worked, for it keeps him in bread and butter.