Heat

18

It sounds cliché but I was raised on a small farm and for the first two or three years we warmed the house with a small pot bellied stove burning wood and coal. We moved to the farm when I was six, so though I was small I had my chores which for the most part was bringing on the wood and coal for the stove. I think we moved to farm round 1956 or so. The stove was a step back from the house we had in the city with a fine furnace but this was a working farm with cows, chickens, space to grow and a pot bellied stove. I know it must sound strange but I never thought anything of the stove. I just figured this was how things went: you moved to the farm and got a wood burning stove. In a couple of years my dad built an addition onto the house which gave him space to insert a furnace. But, that is another story for another time.

My dad was a sheet metal worker: he installed, repaired heating and cooling systems in Boise, Idaho. In the mid fifties large pieces of machinery were often shipped in wood boxes; nice pieces of 1 x 4s of various lengths. The crates were knocked apart when the system arrives and thrown to the back of the shop yard where eventually the wood would be scrapped. That was till my dad asked for anf got salvage rights to the wood. Then once every two to three months my brother and I and my dad would drive the Studebaker truck down to the shop and finish knocking the crates apart and then load the wood and dive back to the farm. The downloaded the wood to what became a great wood heap between our garages.

We drove and yanked the nails from the wood and dad the cut the wood into eight to 12 inch lengths just right to fit inside the pot bellied stove. During this decade many coal burning furnace owners were converting to gas heat; pulling out their huge old Thor furnaces. In fact that is how we got the furnace which eventually replaced the pot bellied stove. Many times when the home converted to gas heat a coal remained and many times significant amounts of coal remained. The coal was no good to the new gas furnace owner and my dad would and nd he would receive the coal—which is another blog.

My job was to load huge ( for me) arm loads of wood and carry the wood into the house and stack the wood next to the stove. Carrying enough wood for the evening could be 10 or fifteen trips. I soon suppressed the Radio Flyer wagon and later the wheelbarrow into the job.

The little stove also burned coal. Dad would order a ton or more lump of coal or so from Zamzows and was dumped out in front of the wood pile; huge stones of black rock which required breaking with a ten pound sledge hammer to a size more amicable to the stove. Then dragging the coal in via the wagon or wheelbarrow. This coal would burn slower then the wood but still little more then coals the next morning but a few pieces of wood would soon bring the outside of the stove to a fiery red.

On cold days like today I think back on the old stove and long snowy Saturdays playing Finance or Monopoly, for hours, in front of the old fiery beast.