Mother’s kitchen range
Note: This photo was taken by Oris George of his wood-burning heating stove. Inside, behind the glass, the fire flashed and light flares through the glass and travels out through the room.
by Oris George
While doing dishes this morning, I listened to the snap and crackle of cedar wood burning in the wood-burning heating stove. My memory raced back to the years when I was a small boy at home. The sound of wood crackling and snapping in the stove brought back fond memories of mother’s large, grey Monarch kitchen range. That stove was always hungry. I could never keep the wood box full. I thought again this cold winter morning about that stove and how mother had to coax it into life each day. That friendly old stove dried out wet gloves and mittens in the winter. The warmth from that stove made home comfortable and safe. From its oven, came loaves of homemade bread, fluffy golden biscuits, cornbread, apple and cherry pies, baked ham, and turkey for holiday dinners. I miss my mother and that old stove on this cold winter morning.
Oris,
I miss my Mom too; I wonder what it is about cold, winter nights that brings out these feelings. We did not have a wood stove as you did.
There is a survivalist, homey, purposeful capacity about building a fire – probably goes back a few million years to the times when fire meant the difference between life and death – on a moment to moment basis. I doubt our primal psyches would easily forget such an item.
As usual, I so enjoy your posts! Keep ‘um comin’! When is your next book hitting the racks?
Danielle