Nostalgia

[Caran]

How many of you remember the damper?

[Ann]

Gosh yes Woofgang, they seem much the same as I remember. I suppose you would put them in a utility room these days.

[woofgang]

there was a trend in the seventies to put one up in the kitchen and hang bunches of herbs off it to dry....the herbs got very dusty and greasy and people walking underneath got covered in bits of shed herb! No, I never did it!

[Caran]

Nor me!

[janbee]

Yes !.... and then I married one !... BIG mistake .

[BlackadderV]

The local word for a damper,whether metal or newspaper, was a bleezer.

[DaisyNonna]

GM Yes! Yuck!

[Clanad]

Here in the rural U.S., we had and still have, in old cabins, dampers to regulate the air coming into the wod/coal fired kitchen range or fireplace. If the range fed into a 6 inch stove pipe that went into the wall or up through ceiling, the damper was a handle imbedded into the pipe that one turne.

Equally as remembered (and still occaisonally used) were the sound made when Grandpa lit or re-kindled the fire in Grandma's kitchen range early in the morning when he used a detachable iron handle to rumble the ash shaker. The handle was cast iron and either revolved in a circle or moved in and out to shake last night's remaing ash through the ash grate into the ash bin to be emptied by one of us kids. If one was still asleep that soon ended when the process began!

Grandma's b;ack, white and green, porcelain front, enormous Majestic wood/coal range with it's 20 gallon hot water reservoir on the side and warming ovens on top, which were known to always have this morning's left over biscuits (no, not sweet cookies, more like scones) with homemade butter and preserves from under the clean flour sack dish towel spread over the kitchen table, to eat after one crawled into the ultra-warm space between the back of the stove and the wall on a frosty morning, pure heaven on earth!

[douglas9401]

Ours was call 'the blower'.

[Sqad]

georgismum

\\\\\\Oh, i thought you meant what we called dampers at girl guides, a sausage shaped "thing" that we made out of flour and water and pushed onto a peeled twig and cooked over a camp fire. Anyone remember those?\\\

Indeed i do......Boy Scouts and Cubs. I was a Sea Scout.....;-)

[Mags22]

I remember them being used to do something to the fire,not quite sure, we had a Triplex fire, which was an open fire, with ovens built in beside it, the grate had a hob thing you could put pans on and boil over the fire.