Elbashï contained no full-time carpenter, but did have a full-time smith. His father was alive, and in I95I to I952 he was still sharing a common household. After much humming and hawing he said he thought he made about T.L.200 (£25, $70) a month: the income of a lowly government official.
Elbashï had a number of other specialists. Two barbers and a man who made sheet iron cooking stoves lived by their trade. A piper and a drummer made enough in the winter wedding season, eked out by watching the village fields in the summer, to make a decent living. Others, another stove-maker for example, shoe repairers, and a cave digger combined their speciality with working their land, and some did odd jobs for neighbours rather as a favour. Similarly one man in Sakaltutan, who was an expert glass-cutter, did odd carpentry jobs, while another welded rubber shoes.
These craftsmen then range from the man who happens to have a reputation for performing some particular service, and will do it if asked, to full-time skilled craftsmen who live by their craft. Where skills overlap those of migrant labourers, for example masons and carpenters, a man may live mainly by migrant labour and practice his craft in the village in only a desultory way.
Traditionally skills were learned by a period of apprenticeship: çirak, p. 56) boys lived with and worked for a craftsman, picking up the trade from him. Others recently have learned skills in the army, and now the government runs special shorttermmobile schools in selected villages for boys to learn the elements of woodwork and metalwork. One such course came to Elbashï in the autumn of I951. Otherwise skills are passed from father to son or sometimes taught to other close kin.
One new skill is popular among the young men: shöför or lorry driver. A Turkish driver needs to be able to do his own running repairs without help from roadside garages and without a supply of standard spare parts, so this skill is not easily mastered. Although it is common for a driver to work on a lorry that