So long, old woodstove friend ~ June 17, 1999

David Heiller

The woodstove is gone. A neighbor bought it. We moved it onto his trailer last Friday, and it was no easy task.

I had grown attached to the woodstove. On the one hand, it was about as inanimate an object as you could find, steel and brick, and as solid as a tiny Gibraltar. There’s nothing colder than a cold stove.

On the other hand, when that stove was full of oak on a winter night, it was as good a friend as you could ask for. It was the center of our household universe, and it didn’t have to beg for attention.

Malika showing her great strength hauling 
wood for the stove. Noah got stuck
 hauling far more wood than she did,
 but that is the subject for a different column.

Our first dog would lie with her head under the stove. She would get so hot that we thought she might burst into flames. We called her the heat sponge.

My wife, Cindy, wasn’t quite that desperate for heat, but on cold days she would sit as close to the woodstove as humanly possible. Sometimes after her morning shower, she would stand with her back to the stove and steam would rise off her robe like she was on fire.

When company would come in the winter, often someone would comment about how good it felt to stand next to heat of the woodstove. “There’s nothing like a woodstove,” they say. It seemed to bring back a lot of childhood memo­ries, pleasant ones.

We told stories in front of it, lying on the floor and watching the coals shift and glow. Having a fire to focus on is an important ingredient in a good tall tale.

A kettle of water always sat on top, to fill the air with moisture. A whirligig sat there too, made by Red Hansen, He made it from a piece of aluminum and a piece of wire. When the stove top reached a certain temperature, the alumi­num would start to spin.

Sometimes the stove would get too hot. When company came in the winter, I had the bad habit of throwing a piece of wood on at the last minute. It would kick in at about the time we sat down for dinner. The person who sat closest to the stove would slowly turn red and break into a sweat and start shedding clothing. It was pretty fun to watch.

David would open the wood of the woodstove, sit on 
the floor with Collin, and tell stories.
 The woodstove a necessary part of the equation.

I asked a neighbor and friend, Tim Peebles, if he wanted to buy the woodstove. He had often admired its heat, and wished he had one in his house. Yes, he wanted to buy it. We agreed on a price, and he came over on Friday to take it home.

I’m proud to say that the two of us moved it alone. When I first tried to lift it, it wouldn’t budge. It seemed to be attached to the floor. Maybe it didn’t want to leave. It must have weighed 400 pounds. It was unbelievably heavy.

We slid two 2x4 pieces of lumber, eight feet long, under it, and lifted it like we were carrying a stretcher, although when we were done, I felt like I needed a stretcher. Even Tim, who used to play football for a college team in Ohio, had to strain a little. Amidst great groans, we moved it in short hops out of the house. Once it tipped a little, and for a second I thought it would fall and crash through the floor and end up in the basement. But we caught it in time.

To replace the woodstove, we are buying a gas stove. It will sit in the same spot, and will look like a woodstove. I’m glad we have made the change. It will be cleaner and safer, and will require less labor from me. I’ve written about that labor a time or two in this column, how much I loved it, and that’s true enough. But the one thing I don’t have enough of is time, and making 10 cords of firewood a year took a lot of time. It seemed to consume all my free time in the fall. I came to that realization about six months ago, at almost the same time that Cindy did, and we both agreed that it was time to make the switch.

I won’t miss some part of heating with wood, like the dust and dirt and ashes and grit, or the chore of cleaning the chimney. Our son, Noah, will definitely not miss bringing in firewood every day. At least he won’t miss it for a while. I used to have to remind him to fill it properly, to actu­ally fill it and not make a little clubhouse inside it. I predict some day he will look back on that chore with fondness.

I’m glad we have sold the stove to a friend who lives just down the road. He^’s going to get a knock on his door some day this winter, when it’s real cold, and I’m going to walk up to the old woodstove and stretch out my hands and say, “There’s nothing like a woodstove.”