Queens Line MacKay Cookstove

Winters were harsh in the Upper Ottawa Valley. They could be brutal on the upper Queen's Line with its wide open, flat topography. A nearly never ending West wind and drifting snow and plummeting temperatures meant that we often just had to entertain ourselves at home. We would satisfy ourselves with the fact that the hazards of going to town out-weighed the benefits, so we stayed put.

Our house was warm enough to get by. We only had oil heat, so we had to pay for every BTU. We just kept it livable. There was no work to have heat, but there was no over-abundance of that much-desired heat, either. We had one spindly line of poplar trees for a windbreak. That was kind of like having a piece of chain link fence for a water bucket.

The Queen's line itself didn't always drift too bad as the West wind for the most part blew it clean. I used to say, "You don't need to shave in the winter on the Queen's Line; just step outside and get your beard blown off."

No, going out back in those days of carburated vehicles in the dead of winter had all kinds of pitfalls: dead batteries, iced carbs, maybe no heat or defrost, and, of course, getting stuck in the snow. Sometimes the allure of a blockbuster movie in Pembroke just wasn't worth it.

Enter the big, elegant, white and chrome and black Oval cookstove in the MacKay 'summer kitchen', which was really a den. That peerless piece of thermal engineering was not merely a stove, it was a potential blast furnace of heating power. It just scoffed at a -35 night with a 30 MPH wind. Even with a patio door on the NW end of the room, a picture window at the SE side, an outside door, probably not the best insulation anywhere, and the Arctic Circle for a close neighbour, high 80 degree temperatures in that big room were still never any problem.

There was a rustic knotty pine table and chair set in the middle of the room, a TV to the left of the patio door, and a tiny bathroom with a toilet and small sink to the right of it, that fantastic stove with its attendant stovepipes and woodbox on the left (SW) wall, and two comfortable couches and some chairs around the room. The one couch was at the picture window that overlooked the driveway beyond the covered porch. The pine wainscoted walls had rustic farm and logging decorations hanging on them, and resting on the wainscoting top cap. It all was totally laid back, completely casual, absolutely welcoming, and positively relaxing. You were just immediately at ease in that room. No presumptuousness about it whatsoever.

We would watch movies on the TV, or play board games at the table, or just lounge on the couches and shoot the bull and dream of bigger and better things. How foolish the young mind can be! We had the best thing going right there in that simple room: friends, food, and exceeding warmth and comfort. Who needs money? King used to lean back on the couch, in totally relaxed, luxuriant comfort and complete contentment, with his hands lightly clasped across his stomach, and say, "Mrry-NAH!" (He would always address his sweet, doting wife, industriously busying herself out of sight in the main kitchen, in everything)

She'd respond from there, "What, King?"

"We don't have any money, but we eat well!" Then he'd turn to me, and say, "Eh, Dan? Eh Dan?" That's success right there. There is and was nothing really worthwhile beyond that.

Rodney was the main wood tender. He took his job seriously. Rodney took any job seriously. He always kept the wood box full, and split the kindling and smaller wood needed for the cookstove by hand with deft swings of his axe into a stick held down by his boot. He never missed that I knew of.

It was always great to come in from snowmobiling to the welcoming warmth of that room. Miko and I and maybe Scotty, too, at times, would stamp off the snow outside, and come clomping in. Before we could even get our suits off we'd already be too warm.

So powerful was that cookstove, that, many frigid nights, by 9 PM, there'd be a "Jeepers, Rodney..." most likely from Mike, who seemed to always be the first to get too hot. That was followed by us having to open the window behind the couch at the porch, and sometimes the door out to the driveway, too. That stove could have heated a screen tent at the North Pole--with the entry flap open. Whoever designed that smelter must have suffered from hypothermia and made it their life's work to find a solution.

Sam McGee of Tennessee,

would have approved with glee,

if you know the poem written alone

by the nervous Robert W. Service;

and a masterful poet was he!

*ahem*

That stove played a key role in the mornings on the MacKay farm, too. King cooked breakfast on it.

I have eaten well in enough places to make me happy, but I will not hesitate for one second to tell you the best homefries I ever ate in my life came off of that cookstove out of a well-seasoned cast iron frying pan at King's hand. As many of you know, I love to write. Sharon says I have a great vocabulary. And some of you encourage me to write more. BUT, I cannot find the words to describe how incredibly mouth watering and savoury and delicious King's morning homefries on that stove were. They were truly at another level of living. I think it would be hard to get addicted to potatoes... unless King did whatever he did to them. I believe it had to do with the way he seasoned his cast iron cookware. There was probably more to it, but I don't know what. The smell just walking in the door would throw you into olfactory ecstasy. I would honestly throw a T-bone steak over my shoulder into the dog's dish to have King's cookstove homefries instead. Hands down. If you've had them, you know what I'm talking about. If you didn't, I just wish you did. Let's just leave it to your imagination, ok? Let it run wild...

One of our favorite board games was Balderdash. We had a great time playing it around that knotty pine table. Sometimes King's brothers Russell and Eddie would sit in with their wives Doreen and... I forget her name! Darn! But I thought she was great! Anyway, if one of the answers that came in had the word 'archipelago' in it, that was Rodney's, so that narrowed it down one. We had a rollicking good time playing that game as a room full of bullshooters tried to out bullshoot each other. I'm not sure how this is gonna make you feel about me, but... I usually won.

We only sat at the table for grub and games. Otherwise it was laze on the couches, and laze we did. You couldn't help it in the depth of the heat in that room.

While we did whatever, King would reside over the evening from his vantage point propped up in the corner of the couch nearest the stove. He'd steadily relay a colourful commentary of the evening's antics to the kitchen, always punctuated with a "Mrry-NAH!" prefix. Of all the audio clips I wish I would have recorded in my life, King yelling, "Mrry-NAH!" is certainly one of the highest. It was like Fred Flintstone yelling, "Wil-MAH!", except King did it a lot more often. The boys never called him 'Fred', even though it had to have been tempting. No, they called him, 'Archie', after Archie Bunker. Especially Rodney. It was usually when there was a disagreement, and Roddy would sarcastically drive home his point with, "Eh, Archie?" That was always funny. King would grind his teeth sideways, and I could see the fantasy of a correcting grizzly bear cuff playing out in his mind. I called my Dad, 'Dad', or 'Daddyboy'. To their credit, Rock and Scotty only called King, 'Archie' when things weren't going their way. Otherwise it was always 'Dad', too.

If Mryna was in disagreement with him, she'd call him 'King-dumb'. The tongue of the Scottish is as dangerous as their sword.

As the night went on, with a 'harrrumph', King would finally heave his way off of the couch, and yell to the kitchen, "Mrry-NAH! We'd better get to bed so this boy can go home!" That was always funny. I guess the funniest part was I wasn't leaving anyway. The twinkle in his eye and the faint smirk around the edges of his mouth would show, and he'd say, "Aw, I'm just kiddin' with ya, Danna! Stay as long as you like!", as he headed to the front part of the house to go upstairs to bed. As he disappeared out of view, he'd call over his shoulder, "But let the horses out in the mornin', will ya?" And he'd laugh: "kyuck yuck yuck yuck yuck..." Oh, man, he was great. Me ol' Diddy...

It was never much fun to pry myself away from the drowsy heat of that wonderful cookstove, and feel the shock of a -25° Queen's Line night with its relentless West wind mercilessly bite its way into me on my way out the door into the yard to a car frozen like a block of ice and not wanting to wake up. I would sure be suddenly wide awake though. The boys would be as groggy as old hound dogs from the heat, and so was I, but one step out into the reality of an Ottawa Valley dead of winter night undid all that, for a miserable, but thankfully short drive home. I doubt the boys even made it off the couches to go to bed some nights. I was darn tempted at times to stay in my spot there, too. Those sure were great times. Just the best times of my life.

I have been left wanting a cookstove of my own ever since. There's a nice spot in the corner over there for it, too...