March 28, 2020
Stories of our youth from Dan Hyde
One of my questions to stimulate memories was “What was your favorite room in your house?” My favorite room in the old farmhouse where I grew up on Harris Road in LeRoy, NY was the kitchen. There are many reasons why besides it was the place where we ate almost all our meals.
First, the entrance to our house was through a back door in the kitchen. When people visited us, they entered the kitchen and usually pulled up a chair from the kitchen table and stayed in the kitchen.
Second, for a small kid, the old linoleum kitchen floor was great for rolling soup cans, toy cars and trucks because of the floor’s slant.
But the main reason the kitchen was my favorite room was our cast iron pot-bellied stove (similar to the one shown above). In our old farmhouse, we had only two sources of heat–a floor oil burning stove in the living room and the pot-bellied stove in the kitchen. We burned wood and coal in the stove and it filled the kitchen with wonderful warmth. Especially in the colder months, the whole family and visitors tended to congregate around the pot-bellied stove in the kitchen.
Since our old farmhouse had no indoor plumbing, it was a challenge to take a bath or shower. Mom’s solution was to heat water in a large tea kettle on the stove and pour the water into a large galvanized wash tub that was placed near the pot-bellied stove. If you were a small kid, you could sit in the two-foot by two-foot square wash tub but when you were a little older you had to stand in the water and bath. And since family and visitors tended to congregate around the kitchen table, you bathed in full view of an audience. Very embarrassing for a fully nude child!
In the dead of winter when we shoveled coal in the stove, the cast iron sides would glow red in places due to the fierce fire inside. I worried that the heat would melt a hole and spill out onto the floor. But Dad reassured me that wouldn’t have happened because the stove was designed to take the heat.
Since the stove was near the outside backdoor, it was our trusted friend. Whenever we entered from the cold snowy outside, it was there waiting for us. We could immediately warm ourselves and hang our wet gloves to dry on the clothes rack in back of the stove.
And our pot-bellied stove was a source of entertainment. The round stove had a half-inch lip around it about half way up (see image above). The lip was wide enough to place an unpopped kernel of popcorn. Being careful of the hot stove and using tweezers, we would place popcorn kernels on the lip. After about ten seconds, a kernel popped and we would try to catch it as it flew around the room. After I caught one, I would wait a few seconds to let it cool then pop it in my mouth!
Because of my friend the pot-bellied stove, the kitchen was my favorite room.
Submitted by Dan Hyde