(This post is about life in Mineral King rather than the place itself. If that isn’t what you were looking for, you might want to change channels.) I cook on a wood stove while in the Land of No Electricity. The oven doesn’t work, the thing is not beautiful, but the stove top has served us well and it warms the kitchen. (Old photo, no bangs, same ‘ol Slop in a Skillet, and I’m sure that my baggy clothes are making me look fat.)
Twenty six years ago, Trail Guy was looking to buy a new wood cook stove. He had a brochure of the most beautiful antique reproductions ever – really elegant. We got married, I became more familiar with the cabin, and then I thought about how fine that new stove was and how much it cost.
Buying that stove for our cabin would be sort of like parking a Rolls Royce in a tool shed. I just couldn’t agree and asked if we could wait to find a good working genuine antique. Being a wise and frugal new husband, he agreed.
For twenty-six years it kept the kitchen warm, it cooked, it helped to dry paintings.
Twenty four years later, we had a bad night with our very old wood stove. We survived, the cabin survived, the stove even survived. Trail Guy did some work on the beast (said “with all due respect” which is what people say when they mean “yuck” but don’t want to offend anything or anyone and when “bless her heart” doesn’t quite fit), and although I was reluctant to use it, there was no alternative.
Our cabin neighbors had bought a stove, then changed their minds. They sold it to us. It sat in the workshop AKA painting studio for 2 years. We don’t jump into things impulsively at our address.
The weekend that I was losing my hearing and sweating my brains out at the show in Visalia, Trail Guy and Cowboy Bert installed the “new” stove. The Steiger & Kerr Toledo (that beast, with all due respect, of course) is gone and now we have a bee-yoo-tee-full Wedgewood!
