Living with the Warm Glow of Kerosene Lamps

Published in The Christian Science Monitor

            For eight and a half years, when we lived in Whitney Valley, in northeastern Oregon, we had no electricity. We cooked on a wood-burning stove, winter and summer. We did get a two-burner propane stove to keep the house from heating up as much from cooking fires, but that wasn't until the last couple of years. We did get a propane refrigerator, so we wouldn't have to bring ice out from Sumpter or cut it from the river in winter and store it for summer use, but that also came only in the last two years.

            And always, we used kerosene lamps. We tried a propane lamp for a while. We appreciated the brighter light it gave, but none of us liked the hissing sound it made and the heat it produced. When the orifice the propane came into the mantles through gummed up from an accumulation of the odorant added to propane, we didn't attempt to fix the lamp but went back to kerosene lamps.

            Kerosene lamps give limited light. Places where any of us sat and read, we set up two or three lamps, and they gave enough light to read by.

            Kerosene is expensive. It cost more than three dollars a gallon. A friend, another user of kerosene lamps, said the best grade of stove oil was the same thing. We tried it and found the oil gave as much light and didn't soot up the chimneys any faster, so we bought five gallons at a time and paid about a dollar a gallon.

            Using kerosene lamps requires a routine. When the lamps were low on fuel, we filled them before dark. During the longer days of summer, the lamps needed filling every four to six days. In winter, they needed filling every second or third day.

            We trimmed the wicks at unpredictable intervals, influenced by how carefully we adjusted the flames. Too high a flame produced oily smoke and burned the wick more rapidly. If we allowed a lamp to run out of fuel, the wick charred, and we had to trim off as much as an inch. Wicks of the right size for our lamps were hard to find, so we made them last as long as we could.

            I pinched off the crusty, carbonized part of the wick between my thumb and forefinger. A straight edge to the wick, with the corners slightly rounded, made the best flame. If I didn't achieve the right shape by pinching off the burned part, I corrected with a sharp pair of scissors, taking off as little of the woven cotton material as I could.

            When we moved to Whitney, Amanda and Juniper were two and four. We said, "Be very careful of the lamps. If one ever gets knocked over, it's almost sure to start a fire, and one that is hard to put out, because the fuel burns rapidly and soaks into wood or any fabric." They were careful. An occasional reminder, "Keep the rough play away from the lamps to avoid knocking them over," was all that was necessary.

            When we had been there three or four years, Laura and I were in the kitchen one bright and sunny day. Juniper and Amanda coming at a full gallop from the back room, through their room and into the kitchen was not unusual. The urgency in their voices and the terror on their faces was. "We knocked over a lamp. We knocked over a kerosene lamp."

            I had to hold my laughter in until I could get them reassured. "It's okay," I said, "It won't burn. Calm down. All these years we've been telling you it'll start a fire if it gets knocked over, we never thought to say, if it's lighted. If the lamp isn't burning, there's nothing to set the fuel on fire. Everything's all right. We just have some smelly kerosene and a broken lamp chimney to clean up. No fire to fight."

            I let laughter flow from me. I hugged them both. "I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing at myself for never realizing I should tell you it won't catch fire if there isn't any flame to set it off. Come on. Let's see if we can get it cleaned up."

            Clean glass lamp chimneys allow the best light. We tried several methods and settled on washing them in hot, soapy water, rinsing in hot water, vigorously shaking excess water off (Keep a tight grip on the chimney. I let one slip from my hand as I flung it downward to shake the water from it, and it shattered spectacularly. Everyone in the family wondered if I had invented a new and expensive recreation.) and letting them stand until they dried.

            I took care of the lamps most of the time, unless I was cutting hay or cutting firewood, any job that kept me going all day, and then Laura took care of them, except for trimming wicks, which she never learned how to do. A dear and subversive friend came to visit one day when Laura had decided to learn how to split wood and was about to begin.

            "No, don't do it, he said. "If you need to know how to split wood, you can learn then. If you learn how now, you'll always be doing it."

            Laura listened well, and I have rarely succeeded in transferring any of my duties to her.

            He was right, of course. She has always had plenty to do that fell to her as the only mother in the family and the main teacher of home-schooled children.

            We left Whitney and moved to an electric house. The differences took some getting used to. Electric refrigerators are noisy. They send vibrations through the house. We had an electric furnace, with a fan, that was bolted to the floor joists, so its vibrations shook the house.

            I had trouble sleeping. I'd fall asleep, and the refrigerator would come on, and I'd snap awake. The refrigerator would go off, and I'd drift into sleep, and the furnace would come on, and I'd wake up with a jolt.

            Gradually, I adjusted, and I could sleep through the noises various machines made as they pursued their duties. But I had to adjust to more than just the noises the machines made.

            Compared to the soft light of kerosene lamps, electric lights are harsh and invasive. There is no need to have light anywhere but right here on the desk where I'm working, but electric lights illuminate every corner of the room, leaving no softly shadowed areas of mystery.

            These more modern houses we have lived in since Whitney are convenient, but they are too independent. They don't need me to maintain a thoughtful routine of buying five gallons of stove oil when I'm in town. They don't need me to watch the lamp reservoirs and fill them when needed, to trim wicks, wash lamp chimneys, cut and put away wood through the summer and fall, to split the wood and feed the stoves, to cut ice from the river in winter and stack it in sawdust in a room in the barn and dig it out as we need it to keep our food cold through the summer.

            I appreciate the conveniences, but I miss the feeling that keeping everything necessary to our survival going depends on keeping to an orderly, carefully thought out routine. I miss sharing with the house the responsibility for light, warmth, and shelter on a very basic level.