The story of my great grandmother's kitchen stove.....

[Kamakiri]

This may take me a few days to post the entire adventure, and when I do, I'll link it in to AudioKarma as well. Bear with me as I tell a story of a wonderful family adventure that began somewhere around 1914.

It occurred to me the other day that it's now been 10 years since I originally registered the audiokarma.org URL, and this story is very reminiscent of ones that I used to post quite often back years ago.....if you're familiar, you'll recognize my style. If you're not, grab a coffee and spend a few minutes with me here

It was three months ago, and I decided to take a last minute road trip with my fiance to the town of Shamokin PA, where my entire extended family hailed from, the town where my parents met and were married. They ended up moving to Buffalo NY, where I currently live, in 1957, when my father came up to work in the then-prospering steel mill industry.

I hadn't visited the town since the mid 1990s, my grandmother had passed in 1991, and my grandfather long before I was born, and since all of the Poliniak relations had left for other cities, there was little left in the town for me or my parents, but their childhood memories, and my own memories of spending every Easter in the small coal-mining burb.

But, let's bring you to the trip to the town. Our first stop in the town was the house where my father was born, right on Route 61 that cuts through the only part of town NOT on a hill. It was purchased by my great grandparents around 1894, and when they became ill, my grandmother and grandfather moved in and cared for them until their passing in the 1940s. My father and his brothers and sister lived there as well, of course, so there was plenty of activity in that old house. It was sold in 1991 after my grandmother's passing.



As we went up towards the house, I saw a sign that said "oxygen in use", and thought, well, my guess is that it's an older person in the home, and I took a chance and knocked on the door.

Oddly enough, the very kind old feller that greeted me at the door reminded me a great deal of my dad, appearance wise, and he treated me to a VERY detailed story of how someone rounded a corner and hit the side of the house and died, back in 2000 or so.

But after 20 minutes, he said to me, "I think there is something of your grandmother's that's still in the basement, would you like to come in?"

I was just in shock.....getting to go inside the house where I spent every Easter with all my relations, that I haven't been in in 21 years? Oh, absolutely I'd LOVE to come inside!