Canned Heat No. 4006

     When we moved from Memphis to Toledo, in 1945, we had never before seen snow.
Throughout the late 1940s, terrible winter storms brought down wires and trees by
coating them with up to an inch and a half of ice. I think of the hearts of trees pounding
and trying to keep their limbs from freezing and bending to the ground and breaking.

The electric stove was rendered useless.  My mother got 

a Sterno camp stove, and a carton of canned heat, and she
cooked candlelight dinners on the Sterno.