Turning up the Heat

 

Carolyn J. Rose

Many chilly mornings, as I tap the thermostat up several degrees while making my way toward the source of that stimulating liquid known as coffee, I hear the sound of a hatchet chopping kindling. 

I know that’s my imagination dredging up an auditory memory from 70 years ago. But there are days when the sound causes my feet to shuffle right or left to avoid the square metal grid once centered in the hallway of the house I grew up in.

If the sound of chopping was accompanied by a string of curses, I’d know the fire had nearly died out overnight and there was no danger my bare feet would be scorched by a wave of heat rising from the cellar.

 Wider awake, I would jump the grid when the furnace was roaring. But I remember very few childhood mornings, aside from Christmas and the first day of summer vacation, when sleep wasn’t like a snug hand-be-down snowsuit: difficult to shrug off.

During my teen years that old furnace was replaced by an oil-burning model and the grid was replaced by baseboard vents. The magic of central heating was controlled by a round thermostat that could be twisted right and left. And twist it we did, setting it too low for anyone not dressed for the Yukon, or too high for those fearing a whopping heating oil bill.

I never saw a thermostat in any of my college dorms. With all the drama that came with crowding so many young people into well-designed but tight spaces, I suspect someone in charge wisely decided to eliminate this potential source of conflict.

When I joined VISTA and was sent to Arkansas, I became familiar with free-standing natural gas heaters and their dangers. 

Yes, with a twist of a handle and the scrape of a match, they quickly put out significant amounts of heat. But they weren’t ventilated and they lacked safety mechanisms to automatically stop the flow of gas. Occasionally we heard news alerts about the possibility of gas pressure dropping low enough for the flame to gutter and go out. The thought of gas filling the house while we slept made for a tough choice between stressing or shivering.

A move to Albuquerque reunited me with floor furnaces. The grids were hard on bare feet, but leaning over them to dry my hair gave me rosy cheeks and that windblown look. Then came Eugene and electric wall heaters with fans that rattled in their frames and sent heat drifting up the walls to the ceiling where it hovered for hours while my nose grew numb and my toes frosted over.

Now we have central heat again. It clicks on in seconds and warms the house in minutes. It’s quiet and clean and efficient. But there are days I wish I could go back in time. I wish I could hear that hatchet and listen to my father turning up the heat on the language.