OLDn’NEWS FROM AROUND THE COUNTY

These cold mornings have made me start reminiscing about my younger years when we had two coal stoves for heat. The one in the living room was only used when we had company or when someone was sick and came to live with us for a while. Otherwise, the living room was curtained off. The stove was a Warm Morning brand; barrel shaped and rather plain looking. You couldn t see any fire, which, for a little kid is an important feature of a stove. The one in the dining room was a big pot bellied stove with a lot of chrome fenders and rising glass windows on the front door that could look like the eyes of a jack-o-lantern if you stayed up too late. Now, that stove was hot and you could really see fire, so if you were really cold and wet you would get between it and the wall. Normally that spot was way too hot.

One of my first chores as a kid was carrying coal from the coal house to the stoves in the house in a coal bucket. You had to get it fairly full or you had to make more trips. Course if you got it too full it was very hard to carry. This made it necessary to change hands all along the way and by the time you got to the house you were awfully cold. One trick was to get as big a chunks as you could to fill the bucket, but if just one big chunk got out of balance the bucket would tip forward and spill the coal on the path. This could cause you and others to track coal dust into the house, with resulting big time trouble from my mother. (We took the same path to the privy.)

Another chore connected to coal stoves was carrying out the ashes and cinders. Sometimes you would get a good clinker to break up with a hammer. A clinker was just a really big cinder. Cinders were spread out on the driveway at our house or put in a cinder pile where someone else could get them if needed. Cinders really packed well and were used to make running tracks at the school. If you dig a few holes in the backyard of older houses around here, chances are good that you will find cinders.

Two events that caused some trying times between my parents were putting up the stovepipe in the fall and taking it down in the spring. I think taking it down caused the most tension, since a lot of coal dust had settled in the flu and the pipes and the potential for a coal dust disaster in the house loomed over the whole day. However, getting the pipes lined up and fitted together in the fall properly was not an easy task either.

A fun job was ‘blacking the stove.’ Each year before winter the stove was ‘painted’ with a substance called stove black. I don’t know whether it was necessary or if it was just to make the stove look better. But it was a messy job and one that could get you in a lot of trouble by spilling some or getting it on something like the floor or your clothes.

One of the great luxuries of my young dreams was to be able to run out of my unheated bedroom some morning and put on my clothes for the day in front of the stove. It was a total no-no in our house to be out of the bedroom without your clothes on. So, here’s how I did it. I would take off my pajamas while I was still under the covers. Then I had to steel myself to jump out of bed and get my clothes on as quick as I could. Then you could run to the stove and maybe get away with putting on your shoes and socks in front of it.

Later this winter, when it really gets cold, I’ll think about Samuel G Johnson who was born in 1807. Samuel was the oldest settler in the Clifton Hill area when he was interviewed for the 1884 History of Randolph and Macon County. He had this to say about cold weather. “I came to the township October 16, 1833 from Wilson County, TN. We all lived in log cabins. My cabin had a board roof, which was weighted down with poles. When there was a snow storm the snow would drift through the roof, and after the storm was over, the snow would be almost as deep on the inside of the cabin as on the outside, the beds being covered like the floor. I have awakened many a morning with my head and neck covered with snow, and after making a fire had to clear away snow from around the fire, so my wife and children could get up to it and warm. The floor of my cabin consisted of loose planks, sawed by hand. The bedsteads were made of small logs, with poles put across and boards laid on them.” So, I’d say I had it pretty good. If you get tired of winter, you can save this column, read Mr. Johnson’s story and you’ll warm right up.

P.S. Now you talk about dreaming of things. We didn’t have running water or a sewer, but I guess that’s better left to a later time.

CORRECTION SECTION – Typo correction from last week: The horses were hitched in 32 seconds, not 12.