Grandmother's House, Part 2

Diagram of second floor, drawn from memory

As long as my grandmother lived and thereafter as uncle Carl and aunt Esther continued to occupy the house, the old-fashioned range was the cooking facility. It was stoked largely with corncobs (I suppose with coal or other combustibles at times) and it served not only for cooking but as a source of warmth in the kitchen during the winter months. The pails containing the cobs, etc. sat alongside the stove to the east. I can still see my grandmother taking off one of the round iron plates from the top of the range and putting in some more cobs. In the winter months I wonder if the kitchen wasn’t the place where most members of the family spent a good deal of the daytime. Probably being cooped up so close for such a long period contributed to the “winter-sickness” that the household seemed to encounter at that time of the year. The stove also served as the heat source for the hot water tank connected to it.

I believe that when my mother moved into the house after uncle Carl and aunt Esther went to Madrid, that she replaced the old range with a modern gas stove. That would seem the logical thing to do as I do know that gas service was introduced to the house (to supply the new gas furnace that replaced the old one).

Grandmother’s house was extremely well constructed, though probably lacking in the insulation in present-day houses. I don’t remember the layout of the basement — I was never in it to any significant extent. I’ve shown what I remember of the ground and upstairs floor plans in the accompanying sketches. The attic was one large undivided room. The water head tank (it had the appearance of a typical rectangular stock tank) was located close to the stairs leading to the attic. The attic was lighted by windows at the north and south ends, at the gable ends of the house.

The woodwork in the downstairs floor was all oak, stained dark. The upstairs was pine or fit, including I think the floors. There were a considerable number of built-in cupboards in the kitchen and the dining room. When the house was first built these had solid oak doors (not paneled) and apparently they warped or the component boards separated. Anyway they were subsequently replaced by paneled doors. I recall uncle Carl commenting many years later unfavorably on what he regarded as unsatisfactory workmanship. And I recall seeing the doors that had been replaced lying up in the attic. What happened to them eventually I don’t know but I’m sure they would have been good material for woodworking at school.

The doors were probably the product of John Hoff who worked at the lumberyard where my father was the part-time bookkeeper. My impression was that he always worked in the shop at the lumberyard rather than as a carpenter out building barns, houses, etc. Perhaps he was a cut above the other carpenters in ability. I think he was an immigrant from Sweden, perhaps his wife was also. Their oldest child Mary Jane, a plump happy sort of individual, was in my class all through grade and high school.