burned wood in the kitchen - not only wood, but oak and maple and
hickory - the kind you buy by the carat nowadays!)

And what a fire it made! Two sticks of the long wood in the stove in the
Big Room, and the damper open, and you'd have to raise the windows
inside of fifteen minutes no matter how low the thermometer registered
outside. In the kitchen grandmother did all her cooking with a wood fire -
using the ashes for the lye barrel - and the feasts that came steaming
from her famous oven have never been equalled on any gas-range ever
made. (Gas-range! how grandmother would have sniffed in scorn at such a
suggestion!) Even coal was only fit for the base burner in the family
sitting-room - and that must be anthracite, or "hard" coal, the kind
that comes in sacks nowadays at about the same price as butter and eggs.
And even the wood had to be split just so and be "clear" and right, or
grandmother would scold grandfather for not wearing his near-seeing
specs when he bought it. "Guess they fooled you on that load, Mr. Van,"
she'd say. "It isn't like the last we had."

Don't you remember how you were hanging around the kitchen one Saturday
morning kind-a waiting for something to come within reach, and
grandfather's cane came tap-tapping down the long hall, and he pushed
open the kitchen door and stood there, just inside the door, until the
kettle started boiling over and making such a noise. And then he
announced that he thought he better go out and see if there was any wood
in market. (As if there weren't fifty farmers lined up there almost
before daylight!) It was about nine o'clock and the sun had had a chance
to warm things up a bit - so grandmother wrapped him up in his knitted
muffler and away he went beneath his shiny silk hat. And because you
stood around and looked wistfully up at him, he finally turned back,
just before he reached the big front door and said: "Want to go along,