Story Break
Cleaning Your Stove
One of the simple beauties of a lightweight alcohol stove is that you never need to clean the little sucker. Or adjust anything. The alcohol stove is basically a little cup with or without hollow walls.
It might be partially pressurized (if you want to get fancy), but probably not, and it doesn’t matter anyway. Alcohol burns cleanly, these stoves have no moving parts for the most part, and the one or two that do have moving parts don’t have any that need cleaning or adjustment.
That’s about it, unless you get a pinch of dirt or a few pine needles into the cup of your stove. If you do and the stove isn’t burning at the time (i.e. it’s “out” as the experts say), turn it upside down and tap it a couple of times, and then blow into it. Bingo. You are now an expert at the art of cleaning stoves. If you would like a certificate to show off to your friends, please send a money order for $29.95, and be prepared to wait six weeks. Add $10 if you would like that framed.
A clean stove is a happy stove. You can tell if your stove is happy by filling it with fuel, lighting it, and waiting a couple of minutes. After it gets hot the alcohol in the stove will begin to boil. Get down on your hands and knees and turn your ear toward it. If you are an old guy, then try to remember which of your ears is the good one, and turn that one toward it.
If you do this right you will be able to hear the stove singing quietly to itself as the fuel boils inside it. This is the sound of a happy stove. A happy stove is a fulfilled stove, and a happy, fulfilled stove will be ever so glad to help you out any old time at all. With the cooking, for example, each and every day.
If you do this wrong however, you will set your hair on fire and have to run around screaming until someone puts you out. This is not necessarily a sign that your stove harbors any ill will toward you. It could just mean that your stove is a little too eager to share its joy and has gotten a tad out of bounds, without actually meaning to. Or it may simply mean that you are a clumsy idiot.
You might notice some pain after experiencing this effect. It is one of those “growing pains” that you thought were just stories that your parents made up. A growing pain is in fact a feeling that accompanies an increase in intelligence, and is often associated with the concepts of “trial and error” and “learning from experience”. Don’t worry about it at all. It is completely normal. Enjoy it.
If you do decide that the stove is out to get you, perhaps after a counseling session or two to confirm your suspicions, remember that you can always smash the little wart flat into the ground by stomping on it any time you want. You really are that much bigger and stronger, and always will be. Of course if you do this you will have to make another stove, so in most cases it’s just better to try getting along and staying friends, you and your stove.