This old house

I've fiddled round all summer, like the ant and the grass hopper. My fiddle won't feed me
come winter. I bought the heaters I wanted for my home....which reminds me of the
old home and the wood stove....
A wood stove is almost a living being. It alternates between belching heat and smoke.
One never knows when it will do either. We had a tall living room wood stove in the
cabin on the hill. My brothers regularly fed it whole large logs to keep us warm. First
they had to cut it down from our woods, and bring it into the yard with a work horse,
that hated to be worked. She didn't mind pulling six or eight kids on sleds while one
of us rode her through the deep meadows. She just didn't care for pulling logs. She
would come on like the poor poor horsey with a broken leg! Till my brother begged
and cajoled her into being hooked to the logging "rig."
Those eleven and twelve year old boys sawed down the tree of Dad's choice
with an old Mc Collogh chain saw......I think that was how it was spelled....my memory
is as old as I...any way, can you imagine turning eleven and twelve year olds lose
to fell a tree with a gas powered saw in the middle of a hundred acre woods....NO
cell phones either!

Sometimes the bears watched them as they worked! The only
thing between them and the bear was a belching, bellowing chain saw that probably
wouldn't cut butter unless a lot of pressure was involved! Once the tree was fell, the
"bumped the knots"/ limbed the tree, and hooked it onto a cable, that was in
turn hooked to the tack on the old work horse who was
expected to be docile and drag that log into the wood lot beside the house. She would
do that, in her own fashion. It took a lot of work to get just a little work out of that
horse.

Once they got the wood brought to the wood lot, they sawed into stove lengths,
chopped it and piled it, then carted a load into the house to keep us fed and warm.
Mom had a wood fed, cook stove which was hooked to a water tank so we
had warm water to do dishes and take a bath in the middle of the kitchen in
her wash tub. The whole idea of modesty was not applicable in this day and age.

The whole idea of fresh bath water was a foreign concept. There were six of
us then, and the wash tub was filled for Dad, then Mom.....each in accordance
with their age. I was last, behind the brother who sang, "I peed in the bath tub!"
While he danced around in a flour sack towel! That water was "well used"
before I ever got my turn....and I doubt that brother was lying a bit with his
little song!

The way to the toilet was, out the kitchen door follow the path, walk due East to
the little building that stood on the hill. You wouldn't need to see it, One
could smell it FIRST! You could also hear it buzz. Even with lime the flys loved it.
No one wanted to tarry on the pot. The only reason there was two holes was cause
no one wanted to go alone after dark! We had cougars.

One night we came home late to hear a bawling. We looked for a calf at first..
Then we discovered two bear cubs high in a tree in the mountain behind our house.
We had a cousin with us,whom we had to nearly tie to the truck to keep him off the
hill. He wanted to go grab a cub! We had to convince him the Mama was near by!

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