I don't know if this is the kind of stove referenced in this story, but it was the only picture I could find
of an oil burning stove - flickr
The kindergarten teacher asked me to check on one of her students. She was afraid he was going to get hurt after he told her that when he went home at noon, no one was there and he had to light the gas heater to warm up the house. I talked to the student and told him I would like to take him home after school and have him show me how he lit the stove. He was happy and exited to have me take him home, as it was very cold and he didn’t have a very good coat. So I got him a warm coat from our store of clothing that had been collected by the PTA.
When we got to his house, I found the plaster off the walls and paper sacks nailed over some of them, but the wind whistled through, and I could see through the walls in many places. I found that they had a little rectangular metal stove, 12” x 30”, and about 28” high. It was just like the ones we had in our Quonset huts on Adak when I was in the Navy, only ours burned oil and this one was hooked up to a gas line.
When we went into the house, the little boy picked up a big box of wooden matches and went over to the stove and turned on the gas. It really hissed as he turned it on. Then he warned me to stay back and he lit the match, threw it in the stove, and jumped back. There was a big flash of light as the gas lit and soon there was a roaring fire in the stove.
There was no mother in the home. The father had no job, but as he told me, he kept hustling up jobs around town to get money for his family. I suggested that we keep the boy at school for lunch and let him attend both sessions of kindergarten. The father was more than glad to let him stay all day, and managed to send him with a lunch.
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