Coal Stoves

If you follow my blog for any length of time you will see that Chicagoans love to whine about the weather (in every season). And for good reason. We've bumped up against April and it's still cold and miserable. It snowed again last week. And if the temperature should creep up to forty it's still blustery, rainy and dreary. However, over the weekend I was reminded how blessed we are to have a warm and comfortable home.

I served my mission in Germany a hundred years ago (give or take a few). Most of the places we lived did not have central heating, and yes, during the winter the water in your wash bowl could freeze. When we got up at 6:00 a.m. to study we built a little fire in the coal stove with coal which we had schlepped from the celler three or four floors below. One of my missionary companions gave this perfect description of what happens when MOLLY MORMON MISSIONARY MEETS THE COAL STOVE:

I didn't even know how to start a fire in the thing, so we just froze until our landlord took pity on us and started a fire for us. Since we didn't know how to do it ourselves, we figured we'd better not let it go out, so we just kept dropping coal in it day and night. Then one time I opened it up and it looked like there was no fire in it. Upon closer observation, I saw that it was about 3/4 full of ashes. I finally got the little door at the bottom open, pulled out the pan (which was overflowing) and dumped it in a paper sack. After about 15 minutes of fishing the ashes out, coughing from the dust sifting through the kitchen, sticking to my hair, etc., I had them all in the paper sack which I set proudly in the middle of the floor, planning on taking it down to the garbage when we left for work. I was so proud of myself for having done it that I didn't even notice the burning smell. In fact, it wasn't until the paper sack started going up in flames that I realized -- ashes stay hot! So I ran quickly and got a plastic bucket. I scarcely had time to pour it all in when it came pouring out the bottom. Well, it wasn't too good for the floor, but I did learn something about ashes.

Our landlord was even less happy about it than we were. About two days later he came storming in asking us if we were planning on burning the whole house down. He told us we were "young enough to know better." That must be German logic, it doesn't make sense to me. "If you had lived in a backward country like Russia all your life I could understand it," he said, "but a modern country like America, surely you should know how to take care of a coal stove."

Well, I did tell him that I had never seen one before in my life and that we didn't have anything like that in America, but I resisted the urge to tell him about the little thermostat on the wall that needs just a flick of the finger to bring the temperature of the whole house up to 70. It's probably too bad I didn't, because to this very day he is still wondering how in the world American can be considered the country with the highst standard of living the world has ever known when we don't even have the coal stove yet.

I'm thankful for that little thermostat on our wall and for a home that stays 70 degrees without any effort on my part!