Me and Mrs. Swallows

Me and Mrs. Swallows

       I remember one old line from my father, who actually heard the story first hand.  Mrs. Swallows probably died around a century ago of old age, so this is just a story repeated. Mr. and Mrs. Swallows were caretakers who lived in a caretaker house on the property known as the Hemlocks by the owning Family, and also known as Summerville Heights, locally.

            Where I now live is still a rural place in east Tennessee, USA. The cottage I live in was built circa 1905, and has 10 foot ceilings as an old fashioned way to help keep cooler in the summer. The cottage next door was built circa 1906, and has 12 foot ceilings for the same reason. I think most homes today are built with 8 foot ceilings to help our present way of heating and cooling using central air machines that both heat and cool using public power. Even the 1905 cottage where I live had a wood cooking stove in the kitchen, and it exhausted through a small  brick chimney built into  the kitchen, which means it did need some connecting pipe, too.

            Well, my city boy great-grandfather, as the story goes, suggested to Mr. Swallows that he stack a nice rick of wood by the back door to aid Mrs. Swallows in her cooking chores. Well, Mr. Swallows responded something like "Oh, Mr. Williams, you don't understand. I wouldn't trust no woman with that much wood"

            Well now I am (and I'll nail some kids if I can)  Mrs. Swallows, and still have to scurry around the yard to collect downed  firewood, pine cones, etc, for the present cooking stove.  And it is now like 2013!  What goes around, comes around, as I have heard before. And now it is my turn.  Bummer.

            By the way, these days the collected wood and pines cones, etc., go into a 55 gallon galvanized metal trash can with a lid. And no one wants to help me clean the soot out of the cooking stove, every so often, especially during the cold season. Wood (even seasoned small wood)  and pine cones tend to make more soot than coal and charcoal do, for example. And why do I even mention such a thing?  Mostly soot will clog up the hot gas flow up the chimney, usually in the stove itself. And I really don't like smoke coming into the room, vice up the chimney.  It has happened a lot, to me.

            Of course, one can just keep the cooking stove running all the time, but even then and every so often, one usually needs to clean the soot out, anyway, and in spite of using creosote cleaner in the interim, too . That usually means letting the stove go cold, first. This task is around 3 or 4 times a year with the present cooking wood stove. So, generally, I try to postpone the soot cleaning work until times are warmer. Even during the cold season, we usually do have warm spells, too.

            Cleaning is just doing a simple disassembly, and ideally using a brush, some cleaning stuff, and some water.  That's it.  Expect to get sooty dirty, too. Oh yes, disassembly usually means messing with the exhaust pipe, but most humans can figure that out, too.