The Story of the Wetta Family Gas Range
The heart of most homes is the kitchen, and in our farmhouse, the heart of the kitchen was the gas range. As a child, I didn’t realize how great our cook stove was, but the more I cooked, especially when helping at other women’s houses, I realized Mom had a nice range. The appliance never acted up, broke down or disappointed in any way. Whether it was the best homemade soups or sloppy joes, or wonderful pies, cakes and breads, the stove produced the most mouth-watering, nutritious food. Of course this had a little to do with Mom’s culinary ability. Besides cooking thousands of meals for our huge family and our always welcome friends, that range heated hundreds of large pressure cookers of canned fruits and vegetables to feed us for the winter. Thinking of the stove, feelings of security but also exhaustion wrap around my memories.
From the time I first began to cook, I realized that Mom’s stove was special because we just turned a knob, and the burners lit. My grandmother and aunts and friends’ moms always had to light the burner with a match. When I began babysitting, Mom often warned me to remember to light the stove with a match. One time I must have asked Mom how she happened to have such a modern, fancy stove when we never had money for anything special. She would laugh and admit that her friends wondered the same thing. No one could figure out where or how she was able to get a new gas range in 1945 when even repair parts for appliances, farm equipment and other essentials were almost impossible to obtain. No one even dreamed of a new appliance. All metal was going to support the war effort.
“First America must win the war. The task is great. It demands total effort. Today and as long as needed, our man-power, resources and facilities must be devoted to building these implements that will help bring victory— Afterwards . . .When complete victory has been won, General Electric will again create and build those appliances that add so much to our American way of life.” (Source)
A creative suggestion of how Mom got the gas range is a small section of my soon-to-be release novel, OUR DUTY.
“Hey, here’s Mr. Farley’s hardware store; let’s go in and see how he’s doing.” She opened the door and was halfway through before Nonie could protest
“Hi, Mr. Farley, how ya doin?” Polly called as soon as she saw him shelving buckets.
“Polly Garrity, how are you?” he exclaimed, climbing down from the ladder. “I hear you’re a real nurse now. You must be the best the hospital has seen.” He wanted to hug her but did not want to become emotional. He politely skipped to a new topic. “Hi, Miss Nonie, how are you?”
“I’m fine. Gosh you have so many different types of things in here than you used to. The store really looks great, Mr. Farley. Mind if I look around?”
“That’s what we’re here for,” he answered. “As it’s become more difficult to get hardware items with the war, I’ve had to, as the salesmen say, ‘diversify.’ Look as much as you want and maybe you’ll find something you can’t live without.”
Polly asked about his children and was shocked to learn that Pete was in high school and realized that was why the teen who waited on them at Walt’s seemed so familiar. Angela was already in sixth grade. “That’s amazing. I move away, and kids grow up instead of staying little like I remember them. I didn’t even recognize Pete when he served us sodas!.” She gave Mr. Farley a chance to talk about the joys in his life.
He finished with, “Polly, there’s no way I can ever thank you for helping so much, especially being so good to Mary at the end. The kids and I couldn’t have made it if you hadn’t been here for Mary.” He swallowed hard and added, “For all of us. The months around her death are still a fog. If you hadn’t stopped in so often the year after, we would probably have starved.”
“I loved helping and taking care of Mary. That is why I became a nurse.” Then, she announced, “Well, I have some news, Mr. Farley. I’m getting married in a couple of weeks.”
“Polly, I’m so happy for you!” He smiled and earnestly added, “I sure hope he is a great guy who deserves you.”
“Oh, he’s better than she deserves!” Nonie teased from behind a shelf of kitchen items.
A broad smile lit his face, “Well, if you’re getting married, come back to the storeroom and see if you can take something off my hands. I’m tired of it taking up space and gathering dust. You come too,” he told Nonie. The girls followed the middle-aged man through a door into the back room. Amid boxes of supplies was a large shape covered with a tarp. He pulled off the canvas to reveal a beautiful, brand new, white gas stove!
“Where in the world did you get that?” Polly gasped. She knew anything made of metal was impossible to buy. “The maintenance guys can’t even get parts to fix the heaters at the hospital!” She and Nonie ran their hands lovingly over the appliance as though it was the Holy Grail.
“I think it was a gift from God. It came one day about a year ago by mistake. I kept informing the company, but they kept saying they didn’t know anything about it. After never getting a bill I got tired of arguing with them. Then I got the idea that God sent it to me for you, Polly,” he explained.
“Oh, Mr. Farley, I can’t take that. You could sell it for a lot of money.” Nonie looked at both in awe.
“Polly, I would probably be laying in a gutter some place, and who knows where my kids would be, if it wasn’t for you helping us for almost two years with no pay. This is for you. Besides, my store would be torn apart with women rioting if I put this out on the floor to sell. Then the G men would be investigating in less than a day to find out how I got my hands on it. You’d really be doing me a favor to just take it off my hands.”
“Just say thank you, dummy,” Nonie smiled.
“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” Polly hugged him. “Come on Nonie, we gotta go tell Johnny and the folks.”
“But no one else!” Mr. Farley warned. Polly signed “lips sealed” before dashing out of the store and running most of the six blocks home while Nonie yelled for her to slow down.
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