Hi Smile - yeah, I think Granny would fit here. My Aunt Bonnie lived in an old farmhouse in West VA and she had a wood cook stove. Right beside the wood cook stove was an electric store and beside that was a microwave. I can remember times when all three would be going strong. It's God's own wonder the wires weren't overloaded. When I would stay with her in the wintertime, I'd sleep on the sofa in the front room. If it was early winter, she would only have the kerosene burner going. The first time I slept on the sofa with the kerosene burner going, I thought...well, I'll wake up dead in the morning. Fumes will do me in. Then I started watching the curtains blow in the breeze and that's when I knew I wouldn't die...not from fumes anyway. There was too much breeze for the fumes to stay long <g>.

I'm 50 and the first school I attended (unofficially as I was only 4 or 5) was a one room school house in WV. It had the pot belly stove and grades 1 through 6 all in the same one room. Each row was a grade and the older children helped the younger children. I was allowed to go because the girl living next door to my Aunt Esther was a couple of years older and she took me for show and tell <g>.

You know...I keep telling my mil that when she's gone so are her stories if she doesn't write them down now. I'm beginning to think the same might be true for me.