january 2: happy thought range is ok

 

Windsor Record, October 5, 1899.

Yes, it is ok to have happy thoughts. Especially when you have a functioning late 19th century beast of a stove that might not be the best on the market but will do you what you need it to do. 

The model that was just ok may have been manufactured by Brantford-based William Buck Stove Company, who appear to have published several pamphlets about their "Happy Thought" line. This note to housewives appeared in an 1899 guide that is currently available on the Internet Archive. 

This pamphlet provided some historical context, with its writer (credited as "the 'Happy Thought' Range Man") declared that "no better stove man ever lived" than William Buck, whose experience "taught him that there was a class of people in this country - a class by the way largely increased since his day - that wanted something better than the ordinary cooking apparatus, no matter how well made, that was at that time in vogue." In short, Buck wanted to appeal to the emerging Canadian middle class as the 19th century wound down. 

The pamphlet suggests that Buck began producing Happy Thought ranges during the 1880s, creating a product they thought was ahead of its time and sold way better than anticipated. 

The ranges were pitched as a great wedding gift, and as a way to promote marital bliss. For some reason, I have visions of one spouse braining the other with a cast-iron skillet if it was suggested that a stove was the most important element of a successful relationship. 

One of the most interesting things in this copy of the pamphlet is this mystery doodle on the inside back cover, which depicts two stickmen about to turn a wheel above what appears to be a bird sitting atop either a lamp, an anvil, or Snoopy's doghouse. 

I sent this to my partner-in-crime Louisa, and her first impression was that it was a pair of firemen at work, cranking a hose. 

Following William Buck's death in 1897, things continued to go OK as the company remained under family control until it was sold in 1920. The Brantford production facility closed in 1931.