THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 14, 1996 TAG: 9601120202
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 05 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Ronald L. Speer
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
During times like these, when the whole world seems to be shivering, I stop occasionally and thank our ancestors for harnessing fire.
We haven't improved on it much in the millenniums that have passed since the cave man found a way to light up the night.
None of our glorious inventions can match the pleasure of rushing in from the frigid outdoors and backing up to a blazing fireplace, slowing turning until you're toasted all over.
Then, with your physical needs satisfied, you can explore the fire with your eyes and discover fascinating tableaus unfolding in the flames . . . Jonah sliding into the whale's tummy . . . Sgt. York drawing a bead on enemy machinegunners . . . Manteo and Wanchese boarding the ship that took the Indian chiefs to England 400 years ago.
There is something about a fire - like there is about ocean waves - that soothes the soul.
But the joys of such simple things as getting warm are being forgotten.
With the exception of construction workers or watermen or utility company crews who toil outside regardless of the weather, most of us are never really cold.
That's a change from when I was a lad, when in winter it seemed like everybody was always cold.
My worst winter was when I was about 12 and my folks lived on what was known as the Sears Place in a tiny, two-room house. Wind whipped through the cracks enough to make the white-gas lanterns flicker. That stretch of the Nebraska Sand Hills had no electricity, and we had no running water.
The heat came from a pot-bellied stove in the middle of the living room, and a wood-burning cook stove at the kitchen area. My folks and my sister slept in the bedroom.
My brother and I slept in a shed about 4 feet from the house, with no heat at all. Come bedtime, mom would fill a hot-water bottle with water brought in from the well 50 yards out in the yard and heated over the stove, and take a hot brick out of the oven and wrap it in rags. My brother and I would undress by the stove down to our long woolen underwear, grab the bottle and the brick, and leap from the house to the shed.
We'd slip under the thick, downy coverlets, arrange our warmers at the foot of the bed, and sleep like babies till dad shouted at us before dawn but after he had fired up the stove in the house. If it snowed during the night there would be small drifts on our bed and across the floor. We'd throw back the covers and race into the house, get dressed and head out to milk the cows waiting in an unheated barn, stopping on the way at the two-hole outhouse where snow often covered the seats.
We'd breakfast on bread smothered in milk gravy, saddle up a horse (dipping the bridle bit in water to keep the metal from freezing to the animal's tongue) and head out three or four miles to a one-room school.
We were assigned the duty of getting there early and starting a fire in the school's pot-bellied stove, using corn cobs for kindling to get the coal or wood burning, so the room would be warming when the teacher and the other kids rode up.
Most times we all brought potatoes, and we'd bury them in the ashes so they'd be baked by lunch.
After school we'd ride home to the barn. After unsaddling the horse and feeding it oats, we'd race into the house and huddle at the stove, standing so close that snow-soaked jeans would steam until they dried.
It felt great. Toasting around the cherry-red stove, we thought we were in heaven.
That's been 50 years ago. As I said earlier, we haven't found any reason to improve on a plain, simple fire. by CNB