Electric power lines did not reach Heber until the advent of the Rural Electric Authority (REA) which came into being in the 1940’s. Before that, Heber residents got their power from a “light plant”. By the time I arrived on the scene, Heber had pretty dependable electric power unless something happened to the power lines bringing the electricity to us from Lakeside.
Several times when I was going to school, the power would go off. A couple of times it was off for a couple of weeks at a time. When that happened, people had to deal with it as best they could. Usually when the power went off in the winter time, school was let out because the heaters in the school were powered by electricity. Since it was too cold to hold school, the power going off meant an unexpected vacation for all the school children.
At home we didn’t have to worry about heat for the house because our house was heated with the wood stove in the front room. We did have a minor problem because the cooking stove in the kitchen was electric. When the power went off, we weren’t able to use the electric range but “not to worry”. Once again my parents had considered any eventuality and were prepared for this situation.
Sitting in the back bedroom we had a wood cooking stove. It was the type that had four “burners” and a water tank for heating water and an oven. The flat plates where the pots sat could be taken off and under each two was a space where you could put wood for a fire. If needed, you could have four pots cooking at one time if you had two good fires going. The space for the fire was not large and only small pieces of wood could be placed there to keep the fire going. There was also a cavity next to the water reservoir so that it was possible to keep a supply of hot water at all times.
Most of the time we just moved the cooking stove into the kitchen and hooked it up to the chimney and we were ready to go. Mom was a pretty good cook on the wood stove too and besides, it was sort of like roughing it so it was fun (at least for me). My job was to keep a ready supply of kindling for stoking the fire. It was not too much of a problem since I was used to cutting kindling for the stove in the front room. It was fun to watch Mom cook on the wood cooking stove.
Mom also would cook on the stove in the front room. Once she got something like a pot of stew or a pot of beans boiling on the wood cooking stove, she could move it to the stove in the front room and it was hot enough to keep the pot boiling all day long. We ate a lot of simple things like stew or beans when the power was off.
I remember that sometimes even when the electricity was on , we would ask Mom and Dad if we could stoke up the wood cooking stove in the back bedroom. They would let us do it and we would cook potato chips on the top of it. We would peel potatoes and then slice off thin slices and lay them on the top of the hot stove and let them cook on one side and then turn them over and cook them on the other side. More often than not, we had almost charcoal black potato chips but we put a little salt on them and ate them anyway and they were pretty good. As the stove cooled we would get chips that were more brown in color and then finally it wouldn’t be hot enough to cook on at all. When it got to that point, we were eating raw potato chips.
The wood cooking stove is stored in the shop. It hasn’t been used for many years but it’s there just in case it is ever needed in an emergency.