Answers
September 5th, 2006 | Uncategorized
My flight’s delayed, so I’ll see if I can answer Straight Girl Fan’s questions (in the comments on my 9/3 post) about Fun Home before my battery runs down. (forgot to bring that crucial little piece of the $&%^ power adapter, the little white plug part)
“Mom, how come you never go outside?” “I told you, I’m a vampire.” Did this really happen, or is this you putting Addams family words in your family’s mouths?
Yes, my mother really said this. Often. She’s always been very averse to sunlight.
Why would putting a kid in an old-fashioned cookstove be less macabre than a modern oven?
Because in those old stoves the firebox would be, like, closed off from the oven compartment. And they’d have yet another compartment further from the fire where you could just keep stuff warm. Like a small child. I guess.
9 Responses to “Answers”
This comment may seem a tad random, but I just finished reading Fun Home and I have the overwhelming urge to thank you, sincerely, for sharing this story.
UK followers of The Archers on the radio – and I bet there’s a correlation between AB fans and Archers listeners – will know that the warming oven of the Aga stove is the perfect place to pop orphaned lambs, or muntjak deer, to keep them snug till they grow up enough to qualify for going into the somewhat hotter oven one step to the left.
It’s a reasonable bet that the old house didn’t have central heating, either, so your grandmother wouldn’t have just put Bruce near the register to warm him up.
Old wood or coal stoves had a separate warmer for plates and such. It was also useful for bread proofing. That’s where your dad was “toasted”.
Those old stoves are collector items now. I remember my grandmother having one of those but it is long gone now. They were actually quite sophisticated and had all sorts of nooks and crannys for warming, “proofing”, baking and for storing utensils. They were huge, heavy and had to constantly be cleaned. You can get replica’s now but they aren’t the same as the originals.
Thanks for the answers.
yes, thanks for taking the time. funny how your folks were at opposite ends of the continuum where sunlight is concerned! but there were so many other differences as well . . .
If I remember my James Herriot right, I think you could put small kittens in those ovens too…
cool blog!