Welcome to the Dry Creek blog. One of the truly fine things about a place like the town of Dry Creek is that there's time in the day for people to talk to each other. A Montana winter can be chilly so there's no better place for that talking to take place than beside the warmth of a potbellied stove. In almost all of my Dry Creek books, I have a group of older men who sit around the stove and talk about what's going on. Potbelly stoves have a long history in Montana winters. Many old schoolhouses were heated by just such a stove -- the stove would stand in the middle of the room with those old two-person desks lined up around it. In those days, snow was melted for drinking water and children needed to run to the outhouse. Most schools only had a dozen or so students. My mother went to one of those schools and was the only girl in her class so she had to share a desk with her cousin, Kenny.
If you've been outside on a blustery day, you know just how good it feels to come inside and reach your hands out to the waves of heat that can come from these old cast-iron stoves. If you have any potbelly stories to tell, please share.
