Ode to a Pot Belly

 Oh the Memories.

When I awoke this morning to Mother Natures beautiful white blanket, I found my thoughts going back to "that snowfall" of many years gone by. I was living in the most western reaches of Kentucky, in a little town called Paducah. It was very hip to live in the country back then. And I really mean... the country.  I lived on a farm that was five miles out of town. Then you traveled down a gravel road. That road finally emptied into a cleared area where a small four room tenant farm house rested. 

The furnace did not work. It scared me anyway and I was glad when we had to stop purchasing home fuel and bought for  a mere $100 a pot belly heater called a Warm Morning. 

Now, I am a city girl. Both my parents are from New York City. My father is dangerous with a screwdriver and I am his daughter.  I would look at that Warm Morning and cuss.  Yet, I learned how to start a fire in it, I learned how to bank it, I learned how to shake it down in the morning, and after shaking it down, I got it going again.  Yup, this little old city girl could get that Warm Mourning fired up faster and faster as the days grew colder and colder. 

1977.  The worst blizzard I have ever seen.  It snowed 18 inches. Then stopped and the sun came out, began to melt everything.  Then, the sky darkened and it snowed another foot.  I would walk outside, fall through the top 12 inches, hit the ice on top of the first 18 inches, pause for a moment and then plunge up to my waist in the snow.  Very difficult trying to find wood to get the smoldering coal back to a blaze. 

I always wondered about the name, Warm Morning.  Was it a joke?  Some twisted mind from the 1800's called that humor?  Was it intended as an oxymoron? My experience was this....there was no Warm Morning that winter.