Fireplaces, Gas Heaters and Winter is Coming
I was six years old in the winter of 1959-60 at the time we moved into the new house. This new home for the Lee family was on the same spot as the old house my grandparents had built shortly after they had moved onto the place around 1912. The old house was the exact representation of the one sang about in the old southern gospel song “Ain’t Gonna Need This House No Longer” in that it allowed in lots of wind, maybe leaked a little with rusty hinges on the doors, old windows, cracks in the floors and only a fireplace for any kind of heat and the breeze blowing down the halls for any type of cooling.
Anyway, the new house was very nice with tightly fitted doors and windows, new hardwood and knotty pine tongue and groove boards throughout the house for floors except for the kitchen and bathroom which had tile floors, knotty pine walls of 4 inch, 6 inch and 8 inch boards on all the interior walls and ceilings of white tiles in all rooms. To say the least, the interior of the new home was light years ahead of the old house.
But there was one little detail that was not much different than the old house. That was the manner in which the new house was to be heated. Because just like the old house, the main source of heat for the new house was a fire place in the family room. Other than this, the heat for the house consisted of the following – a very small propane gas heater in the one bathroom and a gas heater in the living room which, along with the dining room, we never used and a gas heater in one bedroom. This bedroom was supposed to be for mom and dad, but alas, my dear sister Janis got this room with heat and mom, dad, and my brother Silas and I were in the other two bedrooms with no heat in them.
So, during this first winter in the new house, the only real source of heat for the family was the fire place. As my brother and I were the best sources of free labor around, we had the chore of helping to chop firewood and bring it to the back porch and stack it for ready access. We also had to help chop the kindling wood or “lightered splinters” which were used each and every time it was necessary to start a fire.
Going out to the wood pile and loading the old wheelbarrow with firewood and hauling it to the back porch each afternoon was one of those chores we were expected to do without having to be reminded every day. Wow be unto us if dad went to the back porch to retrieve wood to start a fire either in the morning or evening and there was no wood on the wood pile.
I can remember many times during the winters in the house standing close by the fire turning in circles and warming up in my pajamas and then running down the hall and diving into bed, snatching up the 2 or 3 quilts on the bed while still a little bit warm and snuggling down for the night. I can also remember waking early in the mornings on some of those cold winter days with only my nose and face sticking out from under the covers and breathing out smoke or misty vapor and running down the hall in the other direction to stand in front of the roaring fire my dad had built before leaving for work trying to get warm. During the winter, this was also the place we would get dressed in the mornings before school, bringing our cloths out of the bedroom and holding them up to the fire to get warm before donning them.
As Silas and I got older, we also became expert starters of fires in the old fireplace. Dad made sure to show us all the tricks of using lightered splinters as the kindling and laying the firewood on the tops of the splinters just in the right manner to get them burning quickly. We learned what types of wood to use, making sure it was dry and seasoned before it was ready to be firewood. We also learned what types of wood would crackle and pop and shoot little embers out onto the hearth with pine and pecan woods being the worst to do this it seemed to me. During these times, I can remember how the fat lightered splinters would ooze with the turpentine coming out, black smoke surrounding the splinter just before it burst into flame and the smell of the lightered wood burning bright hot yellow and red. I still love to smell fat lightered burning in a fireplace or around a camp fire.
During either the 2nd or 3rd winter in the new house, at mom’s insistence dad finally installed another propane gas space heater in the living room and kitchen area which we could use to have immediate heat in the mornings instead of having to build a fire. However, until I left home at the age of 20, there was still no heat of any kind in the bedrooms of the house other than the one room. After I had been grown and gone from home for several years, mom and dad finally had central heat and air installed in the house.
As I write this, it is getting late in the month of November 2017 and we have hardly had any cool weather so far, much less having any cold weather. But, back in the days growing up, it seems to me we had a lot more colder weather than we do now. Maybe it is just in my mind or maybe it does not get as cold as it did back then. I do know that I can remember many days of football practice in November in the late 1960s and 1970 when it would be dang cold out there and remember playing in Baker, Florida one night in the 1969 football season when it was below freezing when we kicked off.
My home today has central heat and air in it like most others of this day and age, and if it gets below about 70 degrees, my wife and I start whining about “freezing to death” or “being so cold I can hardly stand it.” We have even been known to light a fire in our own fireplace when it gets below about 40 degrees outside to help supplement the central heat in the house or break out an electric space heater and plug it in to knock the chill out of the air.
Alas, we, like the great majority of people living in America these days, have become very soft in our ability to cope with anything that infringes the slightest bit on our comfort. Hard to believe how quickly we have become a nation of whiners and crybabies following the generation of our parents and grandparents and the hardships they endured.
Winter is coming soon. Hope your central air is working and you don’t have to chop much firewood to stay warm.
Bill Lee 