Through two homes growing up I had a wood burning stove. Some great memories. Mom and Dad still have it and they will not decommision it for this possible reason. It has more than supplemented heat. With an above through the wall fan in the kitchen the circulated hot air did a good job on other rooms! I can fondly remember winter get togethers with Ice storms, freezing temps, snow, etc. and all us inside were sweating and in T-shirts around the kitchen table shairing laughter, food, drink, and good company. Man that was awesome. I consider my family normal blue collar folk, not hicks like I see labelled. above. That site Bob linked is a disgrace and so ignorant.
I'll go you one further, I never grew up without a burnin' barrel in the back yard. Many standarounds, talks, warming in between working on cars, trucks, tractors, during Hog killings, Ham smoking, etc., real social like. Yeah I said it... All Redneck stuff? Whatever. Best of times. Everything went in the burnin' barrell and I mean all. Lots of wood, brush, chikin feathers, furniture, old split rail fencing,
beer cans, drain oil to kick 'er up when needed, everything. When that drum was glowing red, anything burned. You laid your glove on the rim for a sec to warm them up (30 seconds too long and the gloves went in too), you leaned up on it a bit in your coveralls to heat 'em up, we burned rags, lit cigars, and faggs off it, used the heat to heat up metal that needed to be fit to equipment hot, man... so many things. dead varmint, shingles, lions and tigers and bears ohhhh myyy!
Once the barrell was beat it went to the scrap pile and a new 55 gal drum could always be had and cut even if we used the one we used to test run boat motors in. We would sometimes lay a grate over cut from the side of a shopping cart and cook hotdogs, roast peanuts, rabbit, squirrel, and yeah once the oil slick from the boat motor burned off they didn't taste so bad. I ain't needin to lable myself a Redneck or a Piney, just from folk that lived what we lived, not the jacked up people in the "real world".
Hell, that thing pictured above is hi tech for our tastes way back when. Might well be a solar power collector.
I'd watch glowing embers float all around and whisper away and it was so beautiful, especially in a wind. I wouldn't trade any of those memories and hundreds more for what people consider "proper" today. Try that S**t today and see where you end up.
Now I have to put these pissy little fires in my "chiminea" or quietly get a fire ring going (couple large truck rims welded together make a right proper ring!) outback if I dare. Ya'll don't sell LARGO short for bein' old school backwoods. I'll take that over living "ghetto". Thanks for the junket down memory lane. I see a story in this. Peace out brothers and sisters.
g.
I really enjoyed reading this.