Wood Stoves & Oil Lamps
Hope you stayed warm this week, preferably by a cozy fire ... which brings me to this story about wood stoves and oil lamps.
But before we get into those beautiful relics of a time gone by, we’ve got to start at the beginning.
I suppose many families/ offices/organizations do a version of the “White Elephant” game at Christmas, in which people bring a present to a party and everyone takes turns opening a gift or stealing someone else’s gift. Everyone leaves with something unexpected that someone else brought.
But in our extended family, at the massive Wickmas event every year, someone suggested adding a new wrinkle to the old game a few years ago.
If possible, people are supposed to bring something handmade or used.
It makes for some touching gifts at times. I have nieces who makes great homemade pies and beautiful sewn pillows. One nephew is an artist with metal. This year my mom brought the old homemade ice cream churn we used as kids.
Anyway, yours truly is rather lacking in such talents as baking or sewing or welding.
But I can write – or at least via this job, have access to some open space in the newspaper twice a week that needs filling.
So this year as part of my White Elephant gift submission, I included a note card that said the bearer could suggest a column of their choosing in The Fayette County Record, and I would write about it.
I did fear that such power could fall into the wrong hands and some rogue family member might use it for evil. Who knows what might get suggested?
But my fears were not realized.
As fate would have it, I ended up with the gift my uncle Joe Fiestam Jr. brought (a neat old oil lamp), and he ended up with the column suggestion coupon.
After thinking on it a couple of days, he said he wanted me to write about “Wood Stoves and Oil Lamps.”
He had fond memories of both – and I think it’s a grand idea.
I was surprised to find out that according to the federal government that as of 2018, some 1.9 percent of people in the U.S. still solely relied on wood for heat. But an amazing 10 million wood stoves are still in use in the U.S.
I’ve never lived in a house with a wood stove.
Only once in my life did I live in a house with a fire place – but I still have great memories of the year my wife and I rented that house in Knickerbocker, Texas, with that old stone fireplace.
Wood stoves, I learned hold a special place in my uncle’s heart.
He was born in January of 1951 during an extreme cold snap where it got down to 17 degrees for three days straight, and he grew up hearing the story of how my grandfather, his dad, stayed up for three nights straight feeding their wood stove to keep it warm for the newborn.
My Uncle Joe said there were actually two wood stoves in the house when he was growing up. The one in the dining room was for warmth and one in the kitchen for cooking.
He said he remembers my grandpa worked hard to keep the wood boxes filled so my grandma could make homemade bread and cornbread every morning.
“He used small split cedar and corncobs to get the fire going and then oak of all kinds to keep it going,” Joe said. “Daddy did the cutting. I did the packing.”
Joe said he remembered how they would warm a big pot of water on the wood stove and dump it into the tub before taking a bath.
“Nothing happened in a hurry back then,” Joe said.
My mom, Joe’s older sister, talks about how during cold weather they would heat bricks on the wood stove, then wrap them in newspaper and put them in their bed under their blankets at their feet to keep them warm.
As far as oil lamps, Joe said his parents always had them at the ready for when the power went out - which was often.
“Electricity wasn’t all that dependable back then.” Joe said. “During storms the lights would go out and we’d need those lamps.”
After I was done talking to my Uncle Joe over the phone about his memories of wood stoves and oil lamps, reporter Andy Behlen walked over to my office. He couldn’t help overhearing and shared his own story of the wood stove he salvaged at the house he now lives in.
He’s got it on their porch, which they can close off, and he fires it up in the winter.
Andy said there’s nothing like the atmosphere that old wood stove can provide.
At our house we’ve been using the oil lamp my uncle gave me. It creates such a beautiful glow.
We’ve fired it up several times when we’ve been playing board games at the dining room table.
Nobody’s yet invented a time machine, but lighting that oil lamp might be the next best thing. It really does feel like a step back in time.
Today, we can just flip a switch or adjust a thermostat and we have light and heat.
But there’s something so magical about having to work a little harder for those things we take for granted today.
I find myself lingering on the thought of my grandpa, 74 years ago, going out into the chilly woods, chopping load after load of wood and sitting by the wood stove feeding it for three days straight to help keep his wife, his new little baby and that baby’s older sister (my mom) warm.
The flicker of a real flame and the crackle of a real fire holds a beauty and a comfort that’s hard to put into words.
Jeff Wick is the editor of The Fayette County Record. You can reach at jeff@fayette countyrecord.com.