Don't Know What You've Got Until It's Gone ...

[Photo old farm house]

The house where I grew up was a drafty old farm house, more than 100 years old. On cold winter mornings, I got dressed next to the old cook stove in the kitchen : It was the warmest spot in the house. I never took a picture of that old stove--and I never thought I'd miss it ... It looked something like this, though not exactly ... It did have the water reservoir on the right, and the storage shelves above ... It sat on a brick platform that my parents scavenged from an old schoolhouse that had been torn down, or burned down. They recycled the brick long before it was fashionable to do so. They even got enough brick to build a fireplace in that old farmhouse ...