Ah, Fall season!

When I awoke this morning, there was a chill in the air that reminded me that I need to get some heat going in my house. The experience reminded me of when I was a child and what we had to heat with. We lived in a three room house that originally had been two rooms with a kitchen added onto the back of the two original rooms. At one time, all five of us and two grandparents lived in those three rooms. But, the only heat in the house was wood cook stove in the kitchen. Every Saturday night, we kids had to take our weekly "all over" baths in a number 3 washtub in front of the cook stove just to keep from getting too cold. Of course, heating up the stove helped warm the house enough to get into bed without our mother having to run a hot iron over the sheets so we could get into the bed.

After my grandparents moved, they had running cold water and electric lights. But their only heat was a kitchen stove and a little "laundry heater in their bedroom. The kitchen stove used wood and the bedroom heater used coal.

Bro. Hardy