Styles circa 1890-1910.
It was always so quaint, so turn-of-the-centuryish, home delivery of heating oil. At least to me.
One almost expected to see a horse-drawn wagon with the stuff, rather than a delivery truck.
I however, never did find out if heating oil was used strictly in a furnace, or if it was used in stoves too.
Dear Frank, as a kid I became use to the smell of Karoscene, in homes. It fueled the stove, and heated the place, also kept the lamps burning.
One grandparent had a modern home, oil furnace with radiators that had air in them and clanked as they heated up.
Early morning the sound of comfort and the coffee smell of brewing in the old type percolators ----something we do not use any more, spelled security for me.
Other grandparent lived in an old farm house, early morning was the chunk a chunk of the coals being shaken down, up stairs had big grates in the floor so the heat would rise, frost on the windows and the hot brick wrapped in a towel at the foot of the bed, stone cold. Grandma so happy and proud of her new electric range cooking bacon and eggs-------The smells on a cold winter morning at both places, the old and the new, safety and love.
Karoscene, the smell brings me back to the summer camps they both had before the electric poles were brought in.
The lamp shades, glass that had to be washed every week, the wick that needed cutting. I have no memory of how the Karoscene was brought to either camp but I do remember the Ice man arriving with Hugh chunks of ice held on big metal prongs for the Ice boxes.
Then the family that spent all their money on a right good funeral, Karoscene heater in the livingroom, big old cast iron wood stove in the kitchen that put out heat too hot to stand by it for minutes at a time. Front of one was too hot while the back side froze.
Miserable life I thought, out house in the back and a bright red water pump in the kitchen, more like a summer camp then a year round home.
Imagine my surprise to find about 20 years ago these Kerosene room heaters on the market. Smack dab in the middle of a room with kids and pets running about them. OH Crap, this is a disaster I thought, but somehow most survived with no problem. A few row houses were burned down, perhaps a few hundred died, but people still buy them.
Mrs. O' Leary's lamp that set off the great Chicago fire was Karoscene, or Whale oil. Blame it on the Irish.
