The second bedroom was smaller and had a door to provide privacy for the girls. In the northwest corner of the kitchen was the door that led upstairs to the bedrooms where my father had shared the “bunk room” with his brothers. It had a tall wood stove with chrome fenders at the bottom where Grandpa could brace his feet while he read the paper after supper. It was a large room that also served as the parlor. In the northeast corner of the room was the door, usually open, into Grandpa and Grandma’s bedroom.
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Grandpa kept the woodbox next to the stove full so Grandma could cook breakfast, dinner and supper. The stove, which was always warm, even on the hottest days, was about halfway between two doors on the north wall. The sink had a pail beneath it to catch wash water, and there was a beautiful kitchen cabinet next to it.
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There was the little table by one of the west windows with a straight-backed chair where Grandma sat and read or did needlework during the day.
I was more interested in exploring the mysteries of the room. I remember hearing an owl call a few times, but I didn’t pay much attention to the voices of the adults. Mosquitos whined outside and crickets sang to each other. The light was warm and inviting, but the corners of the room were in shadow. The stove sat about three feet from the wall, and my father told me how he had spent a couple of nights as a boy on a chair between the stove and wall wrapped in a wool blanket and fortified with Grandma’s dandelion wine as he battled whooping cough. The stove was white and silvery with a black top and a warming oven and water tank above the cooking surface. There was a large dining table at the south end of the room, a small table on a side wall and a big cookstove at the north end. The odor of kerosene transports me back to what I remember as a huge country kitchen. When we visited Grandpa and Grandma Rang in the evening, Grandma would light lamps at dusk. I have a clear and detailed memory of my grandparents’ home whenever we light a kerosene lamp at the cabin.
If a little cake can take a man back to his childhood, think what a kerosene lamp can do. Have you ever walked into a room and suddenly been reminded of something you hadn’t thought about in many years? In his novel, In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust tells how the narrator is transported back to his childhood by the scent and taste of a Madeleine.
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