I often heard Meda’s mother describe being at home in Woodward, Oklahoma one evening in early April 1947 when a major tornado hit the town without warning.
She picked up baby Meda, who was less than three months old, and tried to run to a neighbor’s house, but was tossed back across the kitchen by the wind and blown under the stove. A wall then fell over them, but was held up by the stove, providing a safe place underneath where they waited for the tornado to pass.
They survived and were rescued, but their neighborhood was leveled and more than 100 people were killed by the storm, which remains one of the most deadly in U.S. history.
I had no experience with a stove with a crawl space, so always just bracketed that part of the story.
But while in Walla Walla last month, we were in a thrift store and there was one of these old stoves, with built-in oven. And a space underneath where mother and daughter could have found safety.
Suddenly the story made so much more sense!
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Back in those days, people bought items like a stove as a one-off, lifetime purchase of the item. Meaning that they never wore out, maintenance was done to keep it working and the construction of it was literally taking a solid piece of steel and carving out the parts to make the oven/stove.
And then some beancounter found out that making a one-off item for someone for their lifetime was not a very good business model. That is why today there are single-digit year life limits for such things as refrigerators, and “in the teens” years for items like a stove or a oven.
Ahh, yes. The old Ford Motor saying, “Ford, Built To Last”.
Such a chilling tale of survival. I remember such stoves. Thankful dear Meda and her mom survived.
Hi Ian,
I’ve heard that story and that is the stove. I used to work in a wonderful old Victoria House that was converted into offices. The kitchen, that everyone shared, also had that type of old stove and we used it!
Whenever, I saw it, which was every day, I thought about my Mom and my sister, Meda being saved by the weight of the old stove. All the rest of the home was gone. All that was left, when they were rescued was the stove that had protected them.
Margaret
What a great photo. I remember my grandmother using this type of stove. Some of my maternal family, my great- grandparents, were in Woodward at the time of the tornado.
Sure sounds like Meda and her Mother were both exactly in the right place at the right time! Glad they were kept safe under that sturdy stove during the tornado.
I just cannot believe this. Wow, what a story!
Word of caution to anyone considering a new stove. My kids recently gifted me a glass-topped stove when my old one died. It has been the absolute bane of my existence. After decades of semi-serious home cooking, I have burned more food than I care to admit and been forced to learn entirely new cooking habits to accommodate the *%&#*! stove. Instead of being a useful tool to lighten my load, it is one more thing that I have to manage in our household. The stove is either on full blast or off. Instead of maintaining a constant temperature, it turns on and off to regulate temperature. So, if it happens to go on at a critical juncture of what you are cooking, especially if something delicate, it burns the food. Thus, for certain foods you cannot step away from the stove even for a minute.
In Vici, Oklahoma, three years after the Woodward tornado and twenty miles away, I got spanked for playfully calling my mother the Devil and my father the Son-of-a-Bench. Those were words I’d heard my mother use in addressing or discussing the wood stove. In retrospect I don’t know what makes a particular wood stove diabolical or not. Maybe the way it’s vented?
Love those old stoves. Are you going to do a Walla Walla thrift store haul (I’m assuming you and Meda found some neat finds)?