The Floor Furnace

34. Floor Furnace

For ages people have sat around the fire and told stories, soaked up the warmth and discussed the issues of the day. I am convinced that people are drawn to both water and fire. Fire for the warmth I guess, and water because it is essential to life.

We didn’t have a fireplace in our house but we did have a floor furnace. It was in the dining room near the east wall. It was covered with a grate about 20 inches wide and 40 inches long. Maybe it wasn’t quite that big but it seemed that big when I was a boy. The oil furnace was in the fruit cellar. There was an oil barrel on the south side of the house between the back door and the cellar door. A tube ran from it along the side of the house and then down into the cellar.

To light the furnace you turned a valve that started the flow of oil into the bottom of the furnace. Then you had to take the grate off and lift a cover from a cylindrical part of the furnace. Then Dad would light a Kleenex and drop it down in the cylinder. The more oil the hotter the fire. It would get so hot that standing on the grate would burn your feet. Later on it was converted to gas and had a pilot light

I remember many mornings when Dad would light that furnace and the whole family would hover around that grate trying to warm up. I got dressed right there because it was the only warm spot in the whole house. There was just enough room for a small bench between the furnace and the east wall. My Dad made the bench with tools in the shed. On that bench many family decisions were pondered and announcements were made. I was on that bench years later when I told my Mother and Father of my plans to be married.

When I was really little I got to sit in the warmest spot but as I grew older things grew a little more competitive and I had to sit or stand where I could. As I grew bigger I could actually straddle the grate and warm up pretty quickly. If we had shoes on we learned we could actually stand on the grate for a few minutes before we had to move. I can remember once that my feet got so hot that I had to take my shoes off to let them and my shoes cool down.

My mother says I fell on the grate when I was very small. I don’t remember it but I am sure it happened. It was impossible to avoid accidents when you had something like that in the middle of your dining room floor.

Dad eventually made two more benches like the first. One for each of us kids. I think Nancy and Loretta have theirs and mine is still at Mother’s house. Oh, the stories those benches could tell!

Harmonica Man has arrived!

Come check out this blog for stories and poems written by the one and only, Harmonica Man!