Village Squire, 1974-01, Page 15'S1
mother would rather not have had our tender
ears hear; noises that told us that all was not
well with father and his attempts to warm up
the house.
A lifetime of practice with stubborn fires
had taught father a good vocabulary, but it
had also taught him all the tricks of inspiring
fire from wood that stubbornly refused to
catch flame. It usually wasn't long before the
house was warm again, at -least the lower part
of the house.
Up in the bedroom one did a great deal of
planning before making the first big step of th
day. You lay there and thought out every
move carefully, then with sudden resolve
jumped out of bed, making sure to land on the
rug, not on the ice-cold linoleum, and slipped
into the clothing you had carefully arranged
the night before for a fast entrance. Then you
beat it downstairs, teeth chattering to sit
beside the big stove while dad finished
making the porridge.
As kids we used to love it, of course, when
we went tb the bush with the men to get the
wood, or had the neighbours over for a bee to
cut up the wood into blocks. We had all sorts
of visions of the hardy and exciting lumber
jacks of the north in their bright jackets,
felling timber arid floating it down the river.
Our own experience was less romantic of
course as the chain saw barked and the trees
came crashing down, but , it was still a lot
more interesting than the bask that followed
of piling the wood into the woodshed.
In our kitchen, the cooking was done as far
back as I can remember on an electric range.
We had an old wood range, but it was only
used to heat the summer kitchen on wash
days. Those with longer experience than I will
no doubt remember when wood was the
source of heat for cooking too and for hot
water through the reservoir on the side of the
cook stove.
Those were days when women's lib was
really needed. Cooking was more than just
mixing ingredients from a recipe. It also
included the art of building the right fire to
provide the heat needed for the particular
meal being planned. And, it included being
able to suffer. For cooking in the winter was
one thing, and cooking in the summer was
something else again. When the kitchen wasd
already 90 degrees, what woman in her right
mind would light a fire in the cooking
range...a woman with a hungry husband and
kids who had been working in the hay fields,
that's who. J ust ask any woman old enough to
RAINTREE
14 KING ST.
CLINTON
remember those days it she would like to go
back.
No, we didn't appreciate the old wood stove
much in those days. Next to an indoor
bathroom, an oil or coal furnace were
probably the biggest status symbol on our
concession. Now nearly every house on that
neighbourhood has central heating. The older
people who had to work so hard to keep the
house liveable when they had wood stoves
probably don't miss them much. But I find
myself missing the old black box at times.
Somehow the stove in the middle of the
kitchen brought the family closer together; it
was a symbol of the centre of the family, the
place the whole family gathered. I think there
is something fundamentally sound about that
symbol too, because nearly all modern homes
in the city have built-in fireplaces, and they
certainly aren't designed for warmth.
No, the box stove hasn't been missed much
on "-.e old farm these past few years, but I'II
bet you there are some who remember it
fondly this year. With the price of furnace oil
hitting 40 cents a gallon in some places, it
looks awfully good to be able to heat your
house for practically nothing with the wood
from the bush that still stands on nearly every
farm.
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