1949

For some reason or no reason at all, the year 1949 popped into my consciousness the other day, and now it's like a brain worm and won't go away. I'll get to it, but first I have a thing or two to say about household matters that have been giving me grief.

Yay! The heat works again. I've been jiggering and poking the main heater in the living room for weeks after it stopped working just like that. Got a new thermostat ( thanks to Ms Ché who found one at the hardware store the next town over ) and installed it. It didn't seem to work at first, then about 24 hours later, ta da, the heat went on, and it seemed to be fine for a few days when it started acting up again and then stopped. I rejiggered the thermostat and the heater (a Williams console, 50,000 btu) started working again. Hm. Then a week or so later, boom, no heat. Why? Don't know. 

Doing some research, I discovered "You need to clean it out every few months, dude." Oh? OK, so I looked inside and behind it. It has never been cleaned out since it was installed in I believe 2005 or 2006. Lots of dust, lint, cat hair, yada yada in there. Hm. It's kind of like the blower with the burnt out bearings I found out long after the fact I was supposed to oil every two months or so. OK. I didn't get an owner's manual with the heater so none of this was known by me. I found one online though the other day, and I saw there was quite a maintenance checklist that I previously knew nothing about. OK.  

So I managed to get the top off the thing and put the vacuum hose down into the guts of it and got most of the visible dust and fur off the parts I could reach, got the top back on and set the thermostat at 72° and voila! Fired right up, and has been working just fine ever since. Of course the blower doesn't work. I could get a new one, but I couldn't install it to save my life. [It would require detaching the heater from the chimney, moving the whole unit into the room to allow access to the rear panel behind which the blower is installed, removing the old nonfunctioning blower and installing a new one, then reattaching the heater to the chimney and hoping for the best]. And I discovered the oil ports I was supposed to be using all those years were basically unreachable without turning the whole unit around -- ie, going through the same detach/spin around/reattach measures as required to replace the blower. Nope. Not gonna happen.

But thinking about it, we prolly should have a wood-stove instead. Most folks around here have one or more to heat their houses while we continue to rely on the main gas heater and several small electric ones for the bedrooms and bathroom. What I've thought of is replacing the main heater with a wood-stove and adding mini-split units (that heat and cool) to the bedrooms, kitchen and the living room. Well, that's a thought.

In the first part of 1949 I was living in Iowa in my father's ancient house, parts of which dated back to 1849. There was a coal furnace in the basement which heated the house through long pipes and registers. I think they called the coal furnace "the octopus" because of all the pipes coming off of it. 

I remember the smell. Coal burning has a very distinctive odor, much as gas does. It's sharp to my nose, and I don't like it. 

But I remember the house was warm. Maybe overheated. During a cold Iowa winter, temperatures can often be in the single digits or below zero outside. If you're out in it for any length of time, you kind of get used to it, though it might be uncomfortable. Moving from outside to inside, a normally heated house might be 72° but it will feel way warmer to you. Uncomfortably so.

My father's house was kept warm enough at least to my way of looking at it as an infant. Later I would develop a real anxiety and even anger about being cold, but it was due to... other things.

In May of 1949, my parents were divorced and I was bundled into the back of the 1942 Packard Clipper that my mother got in the divorce settlement from my father (along with $1000 and a bunch of other stuff) and we set off for California. 

My mother hated Iowa, hated my father's family -- who happily returned the favor -- and from time to time hated my father. Other times, they were the best of buddies. 

I really don't know how long it took to get to California. There were no Interstate freeways, after all. Just getting to Route 66 from my father's hometown must have been a challenge. I'm thinking it must have taken close to or more than a week for the whole trip. I remember rolling around in the back of the car, falling off the back seat more than once, and actually having a great time. I loved to ride in the car -- unless it was cold. And in May, it wasn't.

When we got to California -- to my mother's hometown near the Coast -- the struggle began to find a place to live. I remember a little house, Spanish style, tile roof on the porch, prolly from the '20s or early '30s. I think it only had one bedroom and my sister slept on the couch in the living room. I was in a crib in my mother's room. But where did the furniture come from? Mystery. It must have been bought with part of that $1000 my mother carried in her purse, right? I suppose. 

The furniture was mostly maple in Early American style. Very popular at the time. I still have some of that early stuff -- a bookcase and drop leaf table. The furniture was simple, inexpensive, and I suspect she bought it because it was in stock and could be delivered promptly. Maybe from Sears. Montgomery Ward?

I remember the lamps were glass kerosene ones that had been converted to electricity with a kind of bulb holder and cord on a cork that you shoved into the wick/fill hole of the lamp, and my mother -- or was it my sister? -- put frilly shades on them. Very authentic. 

My crib was white and I slept in it until I was five or six. I don't remember having a real bed before then. But I may not remember correctly. Given how often my memory cells misfire these days, I may not be remembering at all. Yet there's something there, something genuine. I remember a lot. I misremember some. And I don't remember many things at all.

1949, I shouldn't remember anything, but I do. Quite a lot, still. Even before I could walk.

And now that I have relearn walking, and I'm still as unsteady on my feet as an infant, maybe memories of 1949 are just right.