Wood Burning Stoves

                                                    By kiki

When we lived at the Simons Brickyard we had a wood burning stove, one similar to the one you see here. Mom would cook on that stove and the stove also served as our heater during those cold winter days and nights of that bygone era

The houses in Simons were not more than shacks, but they did have huge backyards, they were so huge that most people had livestock in their backyards; they also did some farming, growing their own vegetables. In some far of corner of their backyard they had their wood stock and a sharp ax.

“kiki, I need some wood” mom would yell out at me. Having wood ready for mom to burn as she cooked became one of my chores starting around 1948 when I was twelve years old. We had a huge pile of wood that was piled up against our backyard neighbor’s fence. We had lumber, logs, any kind of wood we could get our hands on. It was rare that we run out of wood to burn, but when we did, well, there was always somebody’s fence. Before I could go out and play baseball, football or do some boxing in the dirt floor boxing ring us kids had set up in the empty field where we used to light up our nightly fire, I had to have chopped enough wood for that night’s dinner, the following day’s breakfast and lunch. Was it hard work for a twelve year old kid? Looking back in retrospect, yes, but it helped instilled in me the concept and appreciation of the hard work that's needed to be done to get by in this world we live in .