‘The Horseshoe Man’
Corporate exec back home creating art in Carmichaels
They call him “The Horseshoe Man.”
On a nice day, there he is, at the corner of East South and South Market streets with his safety goggles on, sparks flying as he labors lovingly over a work of art crafted from used horseshoes.
Welding is in his blood: his father, a Lebanese immigrant, was an industrial arts teacher who passed those skills to his son.
But, though born and raised in “Old Town,” John Clarchick has not always been a staple of downtown Carmichaels.
After graduating from Carmichaels Area High School in 1981, Clarchick earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Bethany (W.Va.) College and set out into the big, wide world. He spent more than five years working for the National Security Agency; earned two masters degrees from Johns Hopkins University; and held high offices, including vice president and chief operations officer, at multimillion-dollar companies, like Allegheny Teledyne. He’s dined in Paris, had an address in the Windy City and lived in Mexico City, Clarchick said.
But no matter how far he roamed or what sights rendered him speechless, Carmichaels has always been “home.”
“This place is still rural hometown,” Clarchick said. “It’s all about integrity and who you are. A lot of my friends… they’re very much honest, God-fearing, church-going.”
Clarchick remembers fondly his childhood, when he served as an altar boy (he’s still a practicing Catholic), the King Coal parade dazzled for hours, and the Masontown Pizza Hut was the place to be seen on a Friday night.
“When I was about 4 or 5 years old, where the bank is, there was a movie theater, and we saw ‘Dumbo,'” he recalled. “I lifeguarded out, the first year they opened up the swimming pool in Carmichaels. That was a big thing. It was a big thing to drive to Uniontown, to go to J.C. Penny’s. That was before the mall, even. I can remember the first McDonald’s came into Waynesburg and that was a big thrill.”
One of Clarchick’s small-town big thrills of adulthood: horseback riding, a hobby he picked up nearly two decades ago. He still sometimes rides, but more often he repurposes used horseshoes into colorful works of art that he sells around the country, including at the local National Pike Days.
Clarchick’s welding office is the building his grandfather once sold dry goods from.
“It’s been in my family since the 1940s,” Clarchick said, with a touch of pride.
The building is, in a way, a microcosm of small-town Americana: In the ’50s, it served as a TV repair shop.
“In the ’70s, we had a laundromat. And then my parents,” Clarchick said, “converted it to apartments.”
It stood vacant for some time, until Clarchick set up shop inside. He remembers a time when the street he welds along buzzed with the energy of a booming industrial town, back when Carmichaels boasted a population of more than 2,500.
“These small towns are shrinking and shrinking. You used to have three bakeries in this town. You used to have several insurance companies. A candy store. A men’s clothing, a women’s clothing… You used to have three different pharmacies. And et cetera,” Clarchick said. Now, “people go to Uniontown or Waynesburg or Morgantown. If you look at the history of our country, it’s always been transportation. People came though Rices Landing because of the transportation. You had the roads that got built. You had mom and pop stores, and now you have the giant Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe’s. I see this town being, eventually, a ghost town.”
Perhaps. But until then, Clarchick will haunt the sidewalk outside the building that is his heritage, his inheritance, sparks flying as he takes something old and makes it pretty and new, again.