 Edward "Ed" Garren, MFT is a Family Therapist, justice activist, former West Hollywood City Council candidate, writer and sojourner. By Ryan Gierach. |
In the late 1960s, my parents got an incredible deal on a summer home in the Black Mountains of North Carolina. After years of searching for just the right spot, they fell into the right place, home and price.
A woman named Agnes Angel, who worked for Eastern Airlines in Miami, had built the cabin, “Angel Haven”. "Miss Angel" came up to her home faithfully for decades, until one winter in the mid 1960s when she died in Miami and never returned to her beloved "Cat Tail Creek" home.
The house was built in the 1940s, and had very simple amenities. The water came via natural pressure from the creek. The kitchen had a wood burning stove, and an assortment of small cooking appliances.
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After years of imagining "Miss Angel" as a diminutive woman, we found a photo of her amongst the books. She had the map of "dykedom" stamped all over her, tall, large boned, no make up, plain combed back hair, and of course, comfortable shoes.
In the early 1970s, as my parents retirement approached, and they planned to spend full summers in the home, my mother decided she wanted an upgraded stove for the kitchen. The wiring in the house would not allow for an electric stove, so it would have to be gas.
 Marie Garren, a relative of Ed’s in the 1940s. |
I was working at People's Gas System in Tampa Florida at the time. I told my mother that I could get any kind of gas stove she wanted, at cost, with my employee discount.
To my surprise, she said she didn't want a new stove. She explained to me that for years she had regretted getting rid of an older Magic Chef gas stove, which had the oven next to the burners. The stove allowed for oven access without bending over.
"You'll never find one, they haven't made any like that in about forty years" my mother sighed. I wasn't in any position to argue with her, I'd never seen one.
I returned to work, answering the phone in the service department, where I was the dispatcher.
"It's very old", her voice crackled over the phone on a very busy morning. "My mother bought it in the 1930s, it's practically a museum piece" she continued. "She's dead now, so I want a modern stove in my kitchen."
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I was becoming irritated because she would not stop talking long enough for me to get her name and address, when I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, "Be nice to this woman Garren, she has your mother's stove." So, I exhaled my impatience, and finally got the information. I then asked her what she planned to do with the old stove.
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"I don't know, the oven door is broken and I have it tied shut with a string. The gas company didn't want it, I asked them if they would take it for a museum piece, but they said no." So I asked her if I could come over and look at it after work. She lived in the part of town near where I lived, so I stopped by on my way home.
"Are you sure you want it? The oven is broken, I can't imagine anyone using it now." I explained that I wanted it for a gift for my mother, and suggested that I could probably fix the oven door. After some expected back and forth, I insisted on giving her $25 for the stove, even though she insisted that was too much.
I took the stove to work the next day. With the help of more experienced coworkers, and Rick who ran the warehouse, I began my work.
"There's a box of old Magic Chef oven door springs back in the corner" Rick said. I found the box, under decades of dust, and pulled two springs out, one for each side. They had a peculiar fit, so they were like left and right hands, not identical, but mirror of each other.
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Next, George Cutting, our long time cooking range specialist explained how they had to be put in. "You have to take out the inside oven panels, starting with the bottom, then the back, then each side. Once you do that, you take out the second inside panels, and the springs are inside the insulation near the front."
 Edna with the new stove. |
Sure enough, after some grunting and prying, the panels came out, and there were the broken pieces of the original springs. I put the new springs in, hooking them to the door pulls, and put the oven back together.
Next Robert Bohan, our other long time range man, explained how to convert the stove to use propane gas. "Natural gas is lighter than air, .60 specific gravity, 1,000 BTU's per square foot. Propane is heavier than air, 1.5 specific gravity, and 2,500 BTU's per square foot. It operates at higher pressure as well, so the orifices, or "jets" need to be much smaller, about 25% of the size of the "jets" in a natural gas burner."
The oven control had to be converted as well, including the critical "by-pass" which allowed a small amount of gas to the oven burner once the oven had reached the selected temperature. Bob explained the reason for the location of the thermostat at the top and side of the oven, "It's a carbon rod thermostat. It never goes bad, and is still the most accurate type of thermostat. The expanding carbon rod shuts off the gas when the oven reaches temperature."
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In addition, I took the burner valves apart and put fresh grease in them to bring their turning back to the fluid ease of a new stove.
 Photo by Mikel Gerle. |
Finally, we were ready. We connected the stove to propane, and lit it, calibrated the oven, adjusted the pilots, and it was done.
We let it sit in the ware house connected for a few days, leaving the oven on all day long, making coffee on it, warming up lunches, and finally deemed it ready for a new life.
A few days later, I took it to my parents, who later took it to their cabin in Cat Tail Creek. They started spending summers there a few years later, and the stove was used regularly until this Thanksgiving. After preparing our Thanksgiving meal on it this year, I realized that it was ready for retirement. The stove, made in the mid 1930s, was now about 70 years old, a long time for any appliance.
Because of the remote location of the cabin, power failures are still a regular occurrence, particularly when there is any extreme in weather. So I wanted to find a stove that did not require electricity for the oven to work. Most stoves sold in America now have electric ignition now.
 Photo by Mikel Gerle. |
After a search at two stores, I found an "Americana", which is a budget line of General Electric (but does not have any G.E. badging on it). It is made in Mexico, cost $299, and came with all the parts needed to convert it to propane. I bought the stove, had it put on the tailgate of the Bronco (in it's box) and drove it the 55 miles up Winter Star Mountain to the cabin.
My brother and mother like the new stove. The old stove is being donated to a local museum, and another chapter closes on one small piece of our family life.
But I try to remember the small miracle of chance or G-d that brought my mother the stove of her dreams thirty years ago.
One of my favorite prayer books is "Likrat Shabbat." It is the family prayer book for the Conservative expression of the Judaism. One of the meditations, which I will attempt to quote, goes something like this, "The world is filled with wonder and miracles, but man puts his little hand in front of his eyes and sees nothing."
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What miracles are you missing today?
"I do not weep at the world -- I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."
 Photo by Mikel Gerle. |
"I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes."
"Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at de sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground."
"Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much."
"Those that don't got it, can't show it. Those that got it, can't hide it."
"Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. That is natural. There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food."
"I want a busy life, a just mind and a timely death."
Quotes from Zora Neale Hurston, Floridian author of "Their Eyes Were Watching God"
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Edward "Ed" Garren, MFT is a Family Therapist, justice activist, former West Hollywood City Council candidate, writer and sojourner. He is originally from the Tampa Bay area of central Florida. Ed has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Frontiers news magazine, and other books, including "Out of My Mind", a pictorial memoir by Kris Nelson. He is currently working on a book about Addiction in America.
More information about Ed can be found at Ed’s website