Punchin’ Up the Fire!
Our Medlock Hollow house was built before the Civil War and had bullet holes in the ceiling of the dining room. (If you’ve heard these stories 30 times, please be patient—some have not.) A small detachment of men stormed into the house looking for enemy soldiers and rather than stick their heads up through the attic manhole (a dangerous thing, indeed!), they just shot through the ceiling a few times and left. They had done their duty. My great grandfather built the house and lived there but he was hiding out in the field inside a big hollow shock of corn. But that’s not what this story is about.
The most expensive part of the house was a fine stone chimney and fireplace built at the end of the dining room; not field stones but quarried limestone. I have a piece of the stone at the corner of our house in a flower bed. I was born in that house and lived there for eight years but never saw anyone build a fire in the fireplace. I suppose the cracks between the stones made it dangerous after a hundred years.
My mother was a whiz at building a fire in the kitchen stove every morning at 4:00 o’clock (M-F), using dry wood kindling. I never heard her complain about it. The kitchen fire was always allowed to burn out at night and was seldom punched up. Daytime, just add split chestnut wood to the firebox and regulate the air draft to control the heat. On the right side was a water tank that provided hot water for washing dishes, and the oven made the best biscuits, cornbread, and fruit cobblers.
The living room and the one bedroom were heated with a JUNO cast iron coal heater. It could run you out of the house. My mother had swapped a mother hen and a dozen little biddies for the stove stored in a wood shed. The iron bowl that contained the coal fire had been overheated and cracked. She found another bowl and we were toasty warm. Coal is much hotter than wood and burns less fuel. We lived in the edge of the Wilder coal mines and bought a load of coal at $6.00 a ton. That’s a lot of heat but was then a lot of money.
At bedtime my mother (my father was usually away running a sawmill) would build up a pretty good fire, and then shovel coal on top of it and pat it down with a poker (iron rod). The whole thing was then covered with ashes and the fire was “banked.” The fire slowly simmered all night burning only the coal that touched the red coals. In the morning, the poker stirred up the whole thing and flames immediately shot up and crackled. The door was closed and it began to roar. The air vents had to be quickly reduced to prevent overheating. In a few minutes the room was toasty warm.
But one morning my mother was sick in bed in the corner of the room. My father was a better sawmill man than anything else. He stirred the banked coals and nothing happened. He dashed a little kerosene through the stove door and nothing happened except a grey mist came up. He closed the door and went to get some wood kindling. Suddenly the grey mist exploded and blew the door open. The flame went out about ten feet and over the foot of the bed where my mother was lying but nothing was set on fire. If she had been sitting up, it would have been bad. The stove fire was now burning and my subdued father knew a lot more about punchin’ up a coal fire.
My grandfather had only a fireplace - like the one we never used in our dining room. He was an expert at building and maintaining fire in the fireplace. The kitchen stove was woman’s work, but the fireplace was man’s work. He usually banked the wood fire in the fireplace at night by getting a fire going and then covering it with ashes. In the morning he raked off the ashes, stirred the coals and lay on fresh dry wood. In the back was a Sweet gum or Black gum log. The back stick would be covered with red smoldering coals like a red skin on the log. It slowly burned all week and set fire to the new smaller pieces of wood. It was about gone and was replaced every Saturday morning at which time the ashes were shoveled out, the hearth swept, and the whole weekly process began all over again. Two adult-size beds were in the living room. If they had company, they opened the back bedroom and warmed it from the fireplace. Even at zero temperature the sleepers kept warm only by the covers and their own body heat. They saved every scrap of cloth for making quilts.
One particular act my grandfather performed always fascinated me. If the wood was not quite dry enough for rapid burning, the fire became lazy and the heat would die down. At that time, the solution was not to add more wood, but to “chunk up” the fire with the poker. He would insert the poker into the sticks and turn them over and punch them, pushing them together, or whatever seemed to be needed. Showers of sparks would fly up the chimney like the fourth of July. It was not as simple as it looked. It was done vigorously like he was attacking it. Almost always it brought results. New flames would pour out of the same lazy, dull fire and the heat was immediate to the people sitting before the fire. Wood needs to dry without being rained on for ten months and then some newer wood can be added to keep it from burning too hot and burning up all the dry wood.
One other thing fascinates me to this day. In burning wood, it’s almost impossible to maintain a fire unless there are at least two pieces of wood. It’s that way in anybody’s stove in any nation of the world. If one of the sticks is smaller and burns out, the remaining stick will begin to go out or go into a smoldering state and produce mostly smoke or go out completely. I think it’s that way among Christians and is the reason God made us to function in families and for Christians to gather together in church services to be fed and to fellowship together. Please consider these four verses.
And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching. (Hebrews 10:24-25) (See also Hebrews 3:12-13)
Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance; Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me. (2Peter 1:13-14)
I’ve had people tell me many times: “I can worship God out in the woods or while I’m fishing.” God plainly told us to meet together as Christians because we need one another. That’s God’s idea, not Dan’s idea. People who talk like that have surely never tried to burn just one stick of wood. Our personal fire needs punchin’ up pretty often. Ω
Train Trips—Barbara Carr
Paul described the ideal senior widow to young pastor, Timothy. One does not necessarily become more saintly simply because of age, but it’s refreshing to find older people who have not soured on life from hard times. This verse is worth close study. There are people like this who follow hard after Jesus until their last breath.
“Well reported of for good works; if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints' feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good work.” (1Timothy 5:10)
I grew up with a woman like that verse. Mama was not a perfect woman, but I believe she tried her best to rear Georgia and me to know and love the Lord. The pastors and evangelists were always welcome in her home. No foot washing, but she cooked delicious meals and they stayed overnight and sometimes for a week. She helped the neighbors in need of food or caring for their sick loved ones. She studied her Bible and prayed. She loved to discuss the Scriptures and did so until the Lord took her home. One of my most treasured memories I have of her was when she was about 27 years old.
When we moved from Chattanooga, Tennessee, we moved from a city with electricity, indoor plumbing and the convenience of city buses to Sand Mountain, Alabama and all the things it didn’t have. That was about 1942. Mama went from being able to run a block to a small grocery store to making a list of her needs for Daddy to get at Grandpa Goforth’s grocery store two miles away. Don’t forget we didn’t have a car. We went from an indoor plumbing to a #3 washtub and an outhouse. We went from electric lights to kerosene lamps. If either Mama or Daddy ever regretted that move, I never heard about it. They were happy to get home. They were thoroughbred mountaineers.
I think Mama did miss visiting her brother’s family and shopping downtown, because she made a plan for a trip to Chattanooga. We rode the train. A passenger train passed through Stevenson, Alabama several times a day. From where we lived Stevenson it was down the mountain by way of a gravel road and hair-pin curves, and then across the river by ferryboat.
Daddy had found a job driving a lumber truck which his employer let him drive home at night. Grandpa Goforth’s brother, Ben Goforth carried the mail from Stevenson to our Post Office at Fabius, Alabma which was about three miles from our house. Now, this was Mama’s plan. We would ride with Daddy out to the Post Office; there we would hitch a ride with Uncle Ben to Stevenson and once there, we would catch the train to Chattanooga.
Can you imagine the excitement of a little girl five years old getting in on this plan to ride a train? I must have been jumping up and down and talking and asking questions constantly. We did it!!
The train had a steam engine that belched great, noisy puffs of smoke and steam. Mama got our tickets and we boarded the train. A porter helped me up the steps and then offered his hand to Mama as she stepped up. We soon found a seat and we were off! Most of the other passengers were soldiers either returning home from the war (this was about 1943) or on their way back to the war after a furlough. They were all glad to see me, their having just left their families or heading home to their own little girls. Believe it or not, at first I was a little shy of all this attention, but I quickly got over it and talked to them.
We arrived at the Chattanooga Choo Choo, a big showy, classy station—it’s still a big showy, classy station today even when the trains are absent and no longer thronged by pressing crowds of people coming and going. There’s a nice restaurant there now and people can stay overnight in one of the Pullman cars parked in the station. But then, it looked really big to me. Mama didn’t seem to have a problem with it. We walked outside to a corner and caught a bus a few blocks to downtown.
Mama loved to window shop, so we walked up and down the streets and looked in all the windows. At that time downtown Chattanooga had department stores and shops of dresses and shoes. It was wonderful! Miller Brothers department store had a bargain basement, so we went there and bought a few things. Eating lunch at Woolworth’s lunch counter inside their five-and-dime store was a very special treat!
Then we caught a bus over to Mrs. Blanton’s house. She was mother-in-law to Uncle Johnny (mother’s brother). I guess Mama had written her that we were coming. Uncle Johnny and Aunt Mattie lived next door, but they were at work. Mrs. Blanton made us feel right at home and we had a great time. We spent the night at Mrs. Blanton’s house.
The next morning we reversed the whole wonderful process and arrived safely back on Sand Mountain. If we had stayed in Chattanooga—if we had not moved to Sand Mountain, I would have missed this great adventure. This is one of my wonderful, wonderful memories of Mama. She was in charge that day, took care of everything. Afterward, we made this trip many times and always had a great time. I miss her so, but it won’t be long until I see her again. Ω
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