Life With Father

I love my Dad.

When I got home from work (well, more correctly from my post-work latte at Starbucks; Bucky didn't work today so I read Rex Stout), he was all excited.

Why? Because it's cold here in the hinterlands, and my father is convinced we've seen the last of temperatures in the sixties. So, it's time to start the wood stove!

The first fire of the season. He wanted to wait until I was home to make An Event out of him lighting the fire. I loaded up the wood box, and he set to work with kindling and rolled up newspaper.

Huh. I've been watching my father light fires in that fireplace all my life. I always had trouble with it. But for him, he has a roaring blaze in minutes.

Now that he's older, he minds the cold, so the thermostat is usually set to like 82 degrees. But when I was younger, the heat would be off during the day when we were away, me at school, my parents at work. I would come home to a cold house, and the first order of business would be to light a fire. While I made an afterschool snack (Mmmmm... hot tea and toast with peanut butter and cinamon sugar!) the house would start to warm up.

There's something so elemental about living that way. Takes you right back to the last ice age, when ragtag bands of homo sapiens sapiens would gather round for warmth and protection, and talk about the mysterious and frightening world they inhabited.

My people are of coal mining stock. Although none of my immediate forbears were down in the mines, the mentality persists. Y'see, the mines in the anthracite regions of Pennsylvania were all what are called 'company towns.' The mining company would buy up the land in what was then the wilderness, and people--mostly immigrants from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Wales--would move there to work in the mines. The Company would rent them houses, and all food and other merchandise was available from the Company, which ran the stores. So, the pay just about covered your food and shelter. There was no such thing as disposable income. The Company held all the strings. If you were hurt in the mines, you didn't get paid, and your family would starve.

So the onset of winter was a fearful time. It meant want and cold. No vegetables came from the garden. The food on the table was what was bought at the company store or put up after the harvest. Winter was hard.

And they would build fires in their little clapboard houses to keep warm.

It's good to have a fire.

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