Not many people would immediately associate kerosene with the letter K. But the 100+ year old house I lived in while growing up in Plymouth had a kerosene stove in the kitchen. My mother kept it fired up for slow cooking. The supply of kerosene for the stove was found in a large cylindrical container with a cap and spout that fit on the back of the stove, and it was my job to take the container down to the basement and fill it from a large drum we kept near the outside entrance.
There were two rather nasty problems with this job, about which I complained heartily to no avail. The first is that I always got kerosene on my hands, and the smell of kerosene is not particularly pleasant. The second is that I had to go down into the basement. The basement of the house was deep, large and early on contained one of those huge octopus furnaces and delivered warm air through grates on all three floors. Spooky.
The good thing about the kerosene is the wonderful dishes my Mom would cook on the stove all day – beef stew, spaghetti sauce, chop suey, pea soup, boiled beef – the odors of those meals permeated the house and more than made up for the smell of kerosene I couldn’t quite wash off my hands for a day or two.
A kerosine stove? I’ve never heard of one.
Kerosine makes me think of the lamp my mom always lit during the winter. 🙂
It’s good the odor from meals permiated the house, so you didn’t smell the kerosine.
Fun being here and visiting your blog.
Silvia @ Silvia Writes