The View Is Fair In A Saddle From The Fairview Saddlery by Tom Burriss There is something about the smell of leather that makes me pause. I draw in a chest full, deep and long, and slowly exhale. I am calmed and relaxed. At peace. William Edsel Bowlin is like this all the time, easy going and pleasant. I enjoy stopping at the Dresden, Tenn. store when delivering the MSHR, time just sort of stops for a kind "hello" and time to talk. Fairview Saddlery is packed full of tack products, everything from saddles to horseshoes. A little of everything that a horse owner might want: saddles, reigns, halters, shoes, brushes, sheen, leather care, hats, boots, ropes, gloves, knife sheaths. Everything but feed and clothes are absent. What a person really notices is the saddles. He carries a full line of western saddles in his show room by McCall, Billy Cook, Tex Tan, and original, custom-made Bowlin, if you are lucky and they have not sold out yet. He is able to keep his saddles on the floor for very long. Although his showroom is not very big, Bowlin is more than happy to order or make the saddle you desire. It is not the retail saddles that earn the keep, though. "It's the repair business." Repairing is the bulk of the work that keeps him in business. He admits times have changed for the saddle maker. With the change of technology, a handcrafting saddle maker just cannot keep up with companies that mass-produce saddles. "If you got this," he says, pointing to the showroom, "without that," pointing to the shop area, "you're just not going to make a living in the saddle business any more." Bowlin renovates old and new saddles. He is refitting one with a horn to be a roping saddle; another trail saddle he has made custom additions for comfort. He get jobs from riders who are showing or pleasure riders, and he also gets jobs from civil war re-enactors. He builds any kind of original saddle: roping, cutting, utility, trail. He took me through the shop, showing me some of his projects and collections. His shop is a veritable museum of saddle making history. In his possession are an array of original saddles through the history of the U.S., many of which he comes across at pawn shops and flea markets, and also a representation of the tools of the trade though the years. Bowlin pulled out five original McClellan saddles in varying states of condition. One in great condition was as he had found it. Another he had restored. A couple of the others he was in the process of restoring, and one was just waiting its turn. "These served the military from 18-and-20 to about 19-and-40." That was when the cavalry adopted wheels. "These were made more for the comfort of the horse than the rider." "You could see why, after riding for days in one of these, looking for Indians, the soldiers were ready to fight." He showed me an old saddle stitcher. "This is modern technology… it has metal." A clamp to hold the saddle, and a footgear to tighten the clamp, all fashioned on an aged wood frame. It still gets used, albeit mostly hanging and storing. Bowlin also explained his sewing machines, some of which looked antique, but are still used regularly for saddle and leatherwork. In fact, very little has changed in the process for Bowlin, except for maybe the use of Nylon or pre-waxed threads. "There's still only one way to make a custom saddle, and that is doing it all by hand." With his equipment and patience, there is little doubt you will get the highest quality craftsmanship that riders have come to appreciate from Bowlin. He appreciates the advertising that he gets from the MSHR. He just finished a saddle for a rider in North Mississippi. Not his farthest job though. He has had calls from St. Louis, and Chicago for his saddles, but his work gets around the Mid-South, mostly East and West Tennessee. It also doesn't hurt to have the UT Martin rodeo team in his backyard. Young Edsel, the name by which he goes, started with leather early. Playing cowboys and Indians he would have need for holsters, chaps, sheaths; everything a young cowboy would need. He would visit the shoemaker in Dresden to pick up scraps of leather, which he would fit and fashion and then take back, to be stitched. A he grew he just kept working with leather; a few teachers along the way, but mostly from experience. "It was never really more than a hobby." Sometimes hobbies grow. Having lived in the same place as he does now, he had a small dairy with twenty head of milking cows. "It wasn't much." He built a Quonset hut onto the rear of the milking barn to give him a little more space to work with his leather craft. He got a "government" job working for the post office for 29 years, to supplement the dairy and saddlery. He still remembers the first piece he sold. "I had horses in those days and had broken a few colts which I sold to a man, and I threw in a saddle I had made. I guess he just started talking to people." Orders started coming for saddles, not in any big way, but he would get them. Bowling has been selling his leatherwork out of the shop for over 45 years. His shop has pretty much been in the same place the whole time. When he need more space than the Quonset hut could afford, he built and opened a bigger shop and put it out by the highway. When highway 22 was expanded to four lanes, they moved the shop a bit further back off the road. His daughter Cathy Lea has a corner of the showroom where she works on tooling leather. Her corner of the shop is filled with amazing precision on leather, a job that has her backlogged. Leatherwork is not fast, and she seems to get more orders than she can keep up with. For the tooling she does, it is certainly worth the wait. Even great granddaughter Samantha can't keep away from the allure of leather. She pleaded with Granddad to cut her a circle of leather from scrap so that she could make a coaster. But Bowlin still likes to make belts, knife sheaths and holsters. "I don't like to do too much of the same thing all the time." You can find Edsel Bowlin in his shop just about everyday. If you have the time, so does he. You might even get to sit by the old barber chair and swap stories. "If it could only tell what it has heard," remarks Cathy Lea. The Fairview saddlery is just north of the intersection on Highway 22 at Highway 89 in Dresden, Tenn. You can reach them at 731-364-3456.