
Goodbye Home Comfort
We are downstairs today, Judge and Annie and I, as always. No fire, though, it is too warm. No Annie outside, too windy. But the coffee is gargling its magical brew. We survived Halloween. I survived the emphatic end of a dream. Good bye backwoods Mama. A fellow from down the road gave me his range, of dollars. I showed him my range, of porcelain and cast iron. We shook hands on the price, and off it went. My home comfort wood stove.
The wood stove had become a counter, and a liquor cabinet and a coffee station, and a place to store tea and coffee. The handle on the door could be pulled over by a toddler, and was, once, to everyone’s horror. No toddlers were hurt. The storage needs of a busy cabin met the space needs of a wood stove that threw up too much heat in every season but winter, which is the season we couldn’t get down the long impossible to plow road. It didn’t make sense, it hadn’t made sense, it actually never made sense. There is a reason we don’t cook on wood stoves much, it doesn’t make sense.
I can tell you where my wood stove fantasy began. In front of the television set at age 8 or 9. The Mickey Mouse Club is on. Between the dancing and the talking there were shows. ‘Spin and Marty.’ ‘The Hardy Boys.’ ‘Annette.’ I liked some. Some were strange. But ‘Corky and White Shadow’ had a girl, maybe 8 or 9, I thought, and her grandfather, and a wood cook stove that tossed out biscuits and soup and cookies just before Darlene Gillespie as Corky galloped off for a big adventure. Easy peasy it looked to me.
Read about a mountain cabin and you will find a wood stove. Read an old diary and you will find a wood stove. Read about Laura and Mary and Carrie and Ma and Pa and you will find a wood stove, the center of it all, cooking and drying and baking and warming. They could do it. I could do it. They didn’t mention, they never mentioned, the hour or so every day to chop up kindling.
A quick hot fire, to bring water to a boil to make coffee or tea or oatmeal isn’t quick. Not turn on the burner quick. Not the baby is crying and just bring me a hot cup of something quick. Oh, we had the big tea kettle that just looked grand on the stove. We had the big blue spackled coffee pot, that cowboys poured their evening brew out of, around the campfire.
There was the morning, cold and raining, when the fire would not start. It just would not start. And we slipped and slid our way out to the road, and got in the car, and drove to Aldrich’s Beef and Ice Cream Parlor, for full breakfasts and coffee and warmth.
There was the supper time when the sun was flooding the cabin and the little room baked with it. The door wide open would not release all the heat. Supper time. The wood stove. More heat. And then remembering we had the old Coleman camp stove, a two burner contraption with white gas and a pump that you would use to put pressure on the gas and then would light and all that would take 42 seconds. And no heat thrown off. Not like a wood stove on a hot afternoon. So the Coleman stove stayed on top of the wood stove and that is what I used.
When you start putting liquor in your wood-stove it is proof that the fantasy is crumbling at the edges. When you snake around the power cord to plug in the coffee pot and tea pot, the cracks in the fantasy show through. When you try to remember the last time you built a fire in it and can’t remember, the fantasy loosens its grip. When the only thing you can remember pulling out of the oven is loaves of bread beautiful on the outside and raw on the inside, reality shows itself right through.
There was the toddler who watched me build a fire and heat the oven and bake some cookies. The toddler missed the cartoons. The little voice pleaded “Can we get a wood burning television set?” The kids built one, not wood burning of course, a box, where turns would be taken for audience and actor. I finally threw away the box. I must have, though I don’t remember throwing it away. Wish I hadn’t, now. A 40 some year old well decorated card board box could be pretty useful.
There was the cabin, with just a floor and a roof, and the wood-stove. What more do you need? If you must know, a lot! Mosquito netting. Piles of clothes. A way to keep babies from crawling off the platform. A way to keep heat in.
It is obvious to anyone who walks in the cabin door that the kitchen needed more space. And the biggest space hog was the wood stove. I asked the family. “Fine by me.” “OK with me.” “Sell it.” I was the only holdout. It wasn’t great memories. It wasn’t future plans. It was an old 64 year old fantasy, cracked, loosened, transparent.
I put it up for sale and got a nibble. “Tell me why you want the wood stove,” I asked. “I am just going to cook my oatmeal in the morning and my supper in the evening,” he said. “You know how to make a quick fire?” I asked. “Oh yes,” he said, “the Amish are giving me advice. I use kindling for that.” “It’s great for soup,” I said. “You move the pot over the top of the stove to find the best place for a simmer. You can keep sourdough rising in the corner. Really browns bread beautifully. Here is how you send the heat around the oven.” I could see his fantasy. I admit it. I fed his fantasy. “You know what,” I said. “I will throw in my old woodstove cookbook if we hit on the right price.”
We did hit on the right price. I pulled the old 1977 cook book off the shelf and inscribed it to him. He thought 1977 was old. Before he was born, probably. I happen not to think 1977 was old. The cook stove and the cook book and the fantasy drove away up the driveway in his green pick up.
I am all right today, no wood cook stove, no fantasy. I am not going to look up ‘Corky and White Shadow’ on youtube. I am not going to read about making yogurt the Swiss way on a wood stove. I have said goodbye to 500 or so pounds of fantasy, and it has been carted away. Electricity is pretty convenient. Good morning! Time for another cup of coffee.