Paula Clark is a Middleton native, Russellville resident and retired Butler County language arts teacher.
Back in January, I visited with friends while their mother was in surgery. It was a cold winter day, and the conversation turned to how spoiled we were to central heat and air. All of us had grown up in farmhouses with floor furnaces and discussed how on those bitter cold winter days we gathered around the furnace’s floor grate to warm up when we had come in after playing in the snow or helping with some farm chore.
In my family’s farm house, the furnace grate was in the small hallway. Of course, that’s where the heat was, and that was where the heat stayed. If thermal imaging had been invented at the time, I would suspect a small red-orange glow from 4335 Middletown Road would be seen from the sky. The rest of the house was still chilled, well just plain cold. Electric or radiant heaters had to be used to knock the “chill” out of the air in the living room, the bedroom, and the utility room.
My grandmother heated her kitchen with a Warm Morning stove. Each morning she would shake the ashes down, throw in some kindling to let the fire catch, then add coal. After a few minutes, the coal would crackle and pop, and the kitchen would heat enough for her to begin her daily chores. Of course, every two or three hours, a lump or two of coal would be added to keep the fire going. Even now, I hear the crackle and pop, and I can feel the heat waves from the stove.
When company came, visitors would sit close to the stove to warm up and then later “walk” their chairs back to escape its heat. The Warm Morning also told time, no need to look at the wall clock. During lunch the freshly-fed fire would make its noises, then during the afternoon while Grandma and I talked and dozed, the fire would die down. The drop in temperature in her kitchen would tell me it was time to go to the coal house to fill the coal bucket to keep the fire burning during the early evening and to start it again at breakfast time. After finishing my late-evening chore, it was time for me to walk home.
The next day as my father began his early trek to the feed barn, he watched for that curl of black smoke from Grandma’s chimney, a sign that she too had started her day.
Some neighbors and friends had open-fire grates. Often after supper, families would visit, exchange neighborhood news, recipes, and retell stories of days gone by. Sometimes the men would trade knives or get involved in an animated game of Rook. As time passed, someone would throw a lump or two of coal in the fire.
As a child, after listening to the drone of voices and watching the mesmerizing blue-yellow flames, I would nod off only to be abruptly awakened. Nothing is like the shock of walking out into a frigid winter’s night from the warmth of an open-hearth fire.
A fire was a scientific process. Before going to bed or going to town or church, the fire would have to be banked--letting the fire die down, then moving the ashes to the back of the hearth. Then when returning to the house, the ashes would be stirred, more coal added while everyone hovered around the fireplace to get warm. Of course, stirring the ashes meant dust. Coal or wood, both created dust, and everything in the room had dust. A friend reminded me that those ashes had to be put in the ash bucket and carried out of the house--more dust. These cinders would be put in the driveway so the car or truck would not get stuck during the snowy or rainy months. In the summer the stovepipe would have to be cleaned, and that meant more black dust. This wasn’t the cleanest of heat.
Today, insurance companies frown on open fires, the days of the local coal yard are gone, better methods of heating are available. I do not mind at all the modern convenience of central heating and air. Yes, we are spoiled, but I am one of several who appreciates not going to the coal house in the snow, not stoking a fire, carrying out the ashes or dealing with the dust. A constant 72 degrees is just perfect for me.