Fall Is Here!

We had a cool front come through last night and it was delightfully cool here today! That made me think that we have not yet turned on our heater and it is supposed to get fairly cool tonight. Guess that calls for a long-sleeved gown for a change!


This change in weather made me think about the kind of heat that we had growing up in the Texas Panhandle where it is already much cooler than where I live now! When I was a child the heat in our house came from the oven in the kitchen, a gas space heater in our living room false fireplace, a floor furnace in the middle of the house, and an open gas space heater in the wall of the bathroom. I think we all burned our feet on the floor furnace as we learned to walk, but it was great to stand over that furnace to warm up on a cold winter’s day.

I used to dress in the morning in front of the gas space heater in our living room because it was too cold in our bedroom. And I loved to stand over the floor furnace on cold days and let the heat blow up under my dress to warm me up. I always wore a dress to school but on really cold days Mother let me wear corduroy pants under my dress until I got to school where I pulled the pants off and put them in my book satchel until the afternoon.

Our school rooms were also heated by a large floor furnace on one side of the room under the windows. The desks near the floor furnace were really warm and the area across the room from the floor furnace tended to be fairly cool. The ideal place to be was in the center of the room unless it was a very cold day and then we liked to gather around the floor furnace. We could not circle the desks around the floor furnace because the desks were the kind that were bolted to runners in rows the length of the room.