It is with a tinge of sadness that I announce the official retirement of my beloved Alexander Fawcett.
Alex was first spotted at a sale of belongings at Melissa Beatty’s house on Economy Point. I remember waiting on Melissa’s lawn in the autumn chill with a horde of would-be shoppers. The salt marsh, across from the house was golden. At 10 am, the doors to the ornate, old house opened and everyone rushed in. I headed directly to the kitchen, hoping that Melissa’s wood range would be for sale.
Our house, in Portaupique, was frigid in the winter. When we first lived here, we got a beautiful green airtight Yotel stove to supplement the kitchen oil range. That necessitated a new brick chimney. We were still cold all winter.
The next August, as we were driving to Jim and Elizabeth Campbell wedding in Baddeck, we came across a stove shop. We came home with a beautiful black Morso stove for the dining room. It had embossed squirrels and acorns and an elaborate black iron arch above the main stove that was supposed to provide even more heat.
The following winter, we huddled next to Yotel or Morso. Both airtight stoves looked beautiful, and easily held a fire over night but neither ever warmed the place up.
It was love at first sight when I saw Alexander Fawcett in Melissa Beatty’s kitchen. His pale yellow and green enamel glowed against the ornate metal trim. Two cast iron lid-lifters rose at angles from his shiny blackened cook top. A water reservoir was on the right side next to the oven. His name, Alexander Fawcett was above the oven. “Not for sale” was scrawled in crayon on his large warming oven up top. Having the only thing I came for, “not for sale”, left me free to peruse all of the furniture in all of the rooms. Around me was a frenzy of buying. Several times, while I was contemplating the purchase of an upstairs’ hall table, an antique bed, an oak sideboard, these treasures were purchased out from under me. Then I found myself back in the kitchen in front of a decrepit pine kitchen cupboard that was missing its top doors and had been painted in copious layers of paint. One hundred and fifty dollars was marked on its price tag.
“If you don’t want it, I will buy it,” said a voice over my shoulder. I immediately said “I want it” and removed the price tag. I joined the long line up to give Don Fisher my $150. When paying for this dilapidated treasure, I told him that I had really come to buy the stove. “Well, I decided to keep it.” Don told me.
Later that day, I went back to the sale with a truck to collect the pine cupboard. My then husband was not impressed. “You spent $150 on that,” he scowled. To be truthful, I wasn’t sure why I had bought the old cupboard other than I had money in my pocket and I was caught up in the excitement.
Layer by layer, I stripped the paint off the cupboard. The smell of the stripping chemicals meant that all of this had to done outside. When winter set in, the doorless, stripped cupboard was relegated to the shop until it was again warm enough to work on finishing it.
Several weeks after the auction, the phone rang and it was Don Fisher. “Do you still want to buy that old cook stove?” “Yes, I do” and some how I came up with another $150.
Alexander Fawcett arrived in pieces and immediately replaced the oil cook stove in our kitchen. He did a yeoman’s job of warming the house, heating the hot water and cooking the food. I do admit that when making strawberry jam on a hot June day, none of this heat was appreciated. However, for most of the year, I lived in a very close radius to Alexander. Because Alexander threw copious amount of heat, he needed to be almost continually fed small chunks of wood. I would sit with my feet on a towel in the oven and baby Kelsey on my lap and I would keep the fire box stoked.
Cooking on a wood stove is an adventure.The temperature fluctuates with the size, dryness and amount of wood. Every day felt like a dance, between my friend, Alexander, and me.
Still wanting a warmer winter environment, our next purchase was a new basement for the house. Down came that new brick chimney so that we could have a wood furnace. (Maybe we should have considered, insulation and double paned windows?)
Eventually, Danica was born. With her came 220 wiring, (instead of the 15 amp service). Now, we could also have an electric stove, a washer, a dryer, a hot water heater and in door plumbing! Kelsey was thrilled when Gordon Lewis arrived with his backhoe to dig the “testic".
If Danica had been born a boy, we were going to call her Tobin Alexander after our stove. I still cooked on Alexander when the weather was cool. I emptied his ashes, polished his shiny metal trim, washed his green enamel oven door and warming oven and blackened his big black iron top.
Thirty years ago, right after my Dad died, I was not in the mood to think about Christmas. When reading the flyers, I had the idea of buying electronics as Christmas presents for all three kids. My husband thought that was awful and said that we should give Kelsey, Danica and Yolande materials to build a cabin. This sounded wonderful and the time had come for Alexander to have new abode. We spent one thousand dollars for the building materials, and one thousand for Alexander’s new insulated chimney on the cabin.
During the year of home schooling, we had many terrific school days in the cabin. When I woke up at five am, I would go down the path in the dark to light Alexander. Then cabin would be warm and cosy when we started school. Some of the happiest times in my life were mini holidays when I joined my three kids for a night in the cabin. We played cards by lantern light, we cooked our supper on Alexander and then we climbed up into the loft and into our sleeping bags.
For years now, I have tried to keep Alexander safe for having fires. Eventually, his oven collapsed and although he has decorated the cabin and held candles and shells, he is now officially being retired to fireless status on the kitchen porch. Here he will hold rocks and driftwood, bouquets of wild flowers, and glasses of wine. Alexander Fawcett will be polished, admired and his portrait will be painted. Yotel is also excited. He will escape his relegation to the shop and have a new life in the cabin.
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