Really Cooking

Really Cooking
Toy Stove
8.5" x 11"
pencil
We were really cooking, there on our little porch. My sister, my friend, and I. Maw, the part Blue Maltese cat, that had many, many kittens, lounged over the brick work, and watched. Poochie, the black dog that looked like a Spitz, watched from the flower bed behind a low cedar bush by the steps.
We made a fire in the little wood stove that I had found in the mud at my grandmother's house. Sticks worked for firewood, and my mother gave us small amounts of food to make soup and french fries with. Soup was water, onion, potato, a bit of soup meat, roast, or steak, with canned tomatoes. We had little metal cookware and dishes to use.
Our food sure tasted better than mudpies and weed soup! And, if Mama was too busy to make us a plate of french fries for a snack after school, we could make our own miniature french fries. As we grew older, we could go to the City Cafe for a platter of french fries for 10 cents and a Coke for 5 cents. We could stop by the drugstore and get a funny book for a dime, then head for the cafe, to while away the afternoon. Or, we could stay at the drugstore and read comic books and movie magazines, and sip a Coke or eat a dish or a cone of ice cream. A nickel would give us an afternoon treat, and we could get a movie magazine for a quarter, if it had someone special in it. Hanging out at the drugstore with other kids was the best, but the cafe french fries were really tasty. A lot of grownups were in the cafe, though, for pie, coffee, or a sandwich. They did have juke box music, and we could ignore the adults while we relaxed after school.
I told about finding the stove at my grandmother's house in my last post. In the drawing above, you can see it from the back. Someone told me that it might have been a salesman's sample for selling wood stoves. Or, it could be a child's toy. I don't know. When my grandmother was little, another girl, who had outgrown the toy, gave it to her. I belive that stove may be close to 100 years old.
It is a pretty little thing, and certainly is sturdy. The covers for the holes in the stove top were lost over the years, the little metal thing that lifted the covers is gone, and the inside of the oven needs to be repaired. It's given a lot of pleasure to generations of little cooks.
It took me a while to do this sketch. The thing that gave me a little trouble was Poochie, the dog. I wasn't going to add her, but decided to since she was part of the family and the neighborhood for 20 years. Where my sister went, Poochie followed. Poochie is another story.
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One little note that I thought I should add. Last week, I sent out an angel and called my post An Angel for Laura. Sadly, it was only a few days later that Laura died. That is so hard to believe. She will be forever young, to me, with a dry wit and a Texas drawl.
While Laura probably never saw the angel I sent her, the thought was there. I know that the angel painting touched others. And that is part of the purpose of this blog.