I stood in the basement looking at the one item that had been in my family the longest, around 98 years (aside from the house itself). I wanted so deperately to bring the stove home, but knew that with just my Scion xB and my fiance, that would never happen. I then decided that I had to have a part of this stove with me, as a memento of something special and very unexpected that happened to me that day. I took the oven door off, and carried it up the stairs with me and asked the man if I could buy it. He would have given it to me, but I offered him $40 for the door, which he was more than happy with. Heck, I thought he was going to dance! And I felt just the same
.
After multiple other stops in town, I stopped at the resting place of all of the Poliniak clan dating back to 1876. In many areas of the country, we're scattered here and there, but in that small town, we were at one time very prosperous and great in number.
After coming back home and sharing the story of my trip both on facebook, and with my parents, I spent weeks trying to figure out what to use this well-preserved stove door for. Displaying it as is seemed......odd, because there was absolutely no way to make it look like anything other than what it was. I pondered it for weeks, and I prayed on it as well. It was then that I decided that the rightful place for this piece was to join the rest of the stove, with me in Buffalo NY. But how was I going to try to DO something like this?
The rest of this story.....will be about how it all happened