Sniffing Gas and Getting High
I don't have a picture of the stove, but this is one of the kitchen. My Mom and my Aunt Bonnie.
I complain a lot about our old house on this blog, but there’s one feature I really love about it. We have a white gas stove/oven combination in our kitchen, and the smell of it reminds me of my Mamaw.
(And, no, I do not stick my head in the oven or smell the gas fumes for too many minutes in succession.)
My Mamaw had a white gas stove/oven combination in her kitchen, too. I don’t know how many years it had been there, but it was long enough for the whole room to smell like gas. Even without being turned on, the fumes permeated everything, mingling with the sulfuric scent of the rust-colored well water that lived in her pipes.
I don’t remember my Mamaw cooking many things on that stove. When we visited, my Mom took over cooking duties much of the time. But, Mamaw did make me grilled cheese sandwiches: white bread, Kraft singles, lots of butter, tinged with the scent of gas from the stove.
That smell only lives in my mind now. Her house burned to the ground before she died, and I will never be able to go back. I like the scent of our own gas stove because it makes me think of her. To bring her close to me again, I tried to recreate her gas/sulfur combo without success. Rotten eggs are not popular features in any kitchen. Somehow, opening the window to let the scent of pluff mud waft in at just the right moment has never worked. Our house is too far from a marsh.
But, I still have my ‘eau de gas stove’ smell. Most days, you can find me making popcorn. Alone. Eyes closed, transporting myself back in time to another kitchen in another place when I was another version of myself.
Now we understand where the occasional?! strangeness comes from, I thought it was the effect of too much Cheeso Boy….but. the truth is out, you be gassing.
I think we had gas at one house when I was a kid, but, I don’t ever remember smelling it or desiring to smell it.
I did almost gas myself to the netherland when I was restoring the previously mentioned old 1808 house in Ohio. I had just finished trenching 1300 feet in the field leading to the house and laying the 1300 feet of gas pipe to hook up to the house. It had been a long day and I was hooking it all up and just dozed off next to the furnace in the cellar, unfortunately, the gas was seeping out. The good news is that my wife’s cousin was upstairs and decided to check on me….got me up and outside and then we shut it off and finished the job the next day.
Too much is more than enough when the smell of gas is too much.
I remember your do it yourself gas installing days. I am glad they found you before it was too late for us to know The Grand Poobah.
I only turn the stove on when I need to make something, but there’s something about the swoosh of blue flame and the scent that reminds me of those summers in Kentucky. The gas oven does not have the same allure…….maybe I am a little bit pyro or something.
We need a song…”I’m a little bit Pyro, I’m a little bit rock n roll.” We could get Donnie and Marie to sing it at our next Andra-Dite blog party. It will be a gas….
Oh my. You just reminded me of another great story.
And, I once bought a Donny Osmond CD. MTM forbids me to pollute the skulls waves in our house with it.
Donnie was the featured entertainment at the Rotary Convention in Salt Lake City in 2007 and he was great. He was funny, sang great songs. walked into the audience while singing and telling jokes. A very pleasant surprise.
Don’t let Cheeso Tecno Boy rules the waves….stand up for your DONNIE!!!!!
I am sure he puts on a good show. I still love him.
Growing up, we had gas stoves, and my mother often gave us stern warning about them; I wasn’t allowed to use one alone until nearly a teen, so to this day, I’m a little skittish around gas stoves.
The scent of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches brings back childhood to me. One of my fondest memories is coming home from school, making a sandwich since we were not allowed to use the stove–see paragraph above– and watching cartoons before settling down to homework.
I remember that your Mom had a healthy respect for fire, didn’t she? Mamaw’s house burned when the coal heater caught on fire. She lived so far out in the middle of nowhere that nobody could get to it before it was totally destroyed.
Peanut butter and jelly is still one of my faves. These days, I have it on toasted GF bread, and it is still just divine.
All of us did. Two cousins perished in a fire due to playing with matches, so we took her admonitions to heart.
I know the smell, but I have always been a bit to wary of things exploding or going up in flames. And your description of your Mamaw’s house “burned to the ground”, doesn’t really do much to calm that fear.
But, just to make you happy, if you want some obnoxious sulfer water, I will bring you some back from Edisto the next time we are out there. You can have all you want because I detest the stuff.
Now, please get your head out of the oven. Besides, that position isn’t lady-like.
When have I ever been lady-like?
I have always thought of you as fine example of the modern lady. You just, shall we say, have your own style at it.
Well, there is nothing wrong with being unique, is there?
I am not sure what smell or smells take me down memory lane to home. The closest thing would probably have to be cigarette smoke since both my parents were chain smokers. When we lived in Duck Ditch we were on well water and man did that water stink to high heaven. I am so glad that we no longer have to smell that stench. Yuk….
A lot of smokers in my extended family, too. Or, recovered smokers.
The 1965 gas double oven range combo that my Mama had in our kitchen in Anderson gave off that same scent. However, I didn’t like it at all. But that stove worked well all the way up until she sold the house in 2006 and moved to her apartment at the retirement community.
It was the first stove on which I cooked or baked. I do like gas stoves and ovens, but they do heat up the kitchen!
Yeah. We grill a lot this time of year for that reason. It does heat up the whole house. In winter, with our cold house, it rocks, though.
Yes, grilling this time of year is the best. We’ve gotta dig our grill out from our neighbor’s pile of junk that is on top of the grill in our common storage space. One of the things I cilantro about condo living and sharing common storage space: I can’t control my neighbor’s storage habits.
I have to say that our cheapo charcoal tabletop model works like a dream. MTM just throws it under the house in the off-season.
In the past, we kept the grill up here on the deck. We must have gas b/c of condo regs. It got put under the house last year when we moved in, and never got pulled back out…we’ve been grillless all year.
Well, the Slathered swordfish we did a few days ago on the grill was to die for. Swordfish steak, salt, pepper, slather original marinade. That was it.