Please Don’t Take My Gas Stove

Please don’t take my Gas Stove!

I’ve read with interest an effort by the US Consumer Product Commission to ban gas stoves.  I’m always alarmed by the government’s long-armed reach into our lives. Especially when it concerns our homes. I don’t know if “A man’s home is his castle” is a law, but it should be.

Before talking about gas stoves, I want to add this disclaimer: the proposed law would prohibit gas stoves in new homes. You can decide if that’s government overreach.

I have a unique vantage point, being born in the middle of the 20th Century.  I can look back as well as ahead.

In Dry Creek, I knew plenty of folks who’d cooked on wood-fired potbelly stoves. They said, “The day we got our Butane Stove was one of the happiest days of my life. Gone were the days of chopping wood on a frosty cold morning.”

My vantage point also brings me forward to the second decade of the 21st Century.  We’ve enjoyed so many improvements that our ancestors of the 19th Century would be astounded by.

So much has changed during my lifetime. I grew up in the era of party lines and pay phones. Now, I can send out this blog post instantaneously to over 1500 friends scattered across the earth. All I do is press one button. That’s something!

Circling back to my gas stoves, I grew up in a home with one. My folks had a large propane tank in the yard. A gas stove in the house gave instant heat for cooking.

Old-timers in Dry Creek kept a coffee pot above the Gas pilot light, ready to instantly fire up the stove when “company came by.”  By about two o’clock in the afternoon, that coffee had grown hair on its chin.

Most of my generation, including me, moved up to All-Electric homes. They are great, convenient, and cook evenly.  I’m grateful.

Our all-electric homes are great until they aren’t. When a hurricane or ice storm hits, we all run home to Momma’s . . .

Where the coffee is always hot, and Momma is waiting with open arms.

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