- Good Times in Goshen
Sunday, August 10, 2008
yesterday i hit a photographic jackpot — the good time stove company in nearby goshen, ma. not only is good time stove the place to find beautifully restored antique stoves of every size and shape (including stunning, vintage 1930’s gas kitchen stoves) but it’s also a landmark, thanks to the enormous tin man of goshen who welcomes visitors to the shop. built in 1955 to advertise a local fuel company, the tin man has been featured in the boston globe, the daily hampshire gazette, the berkshire eagle, and yankee magazine, as well as being a subject for bill griffith’s comic zippy the pinhead. you can read all about the towering tin man, including the story of how he got his sizable heart here on the good time stove company’s blog.
he’s awesome.
fascinating, random objects of rusty metal and painted wood embellish the outside of the shop - signs, tools, iron gates, wagon wheels, bikes, an old pair of wooden crutches, hand made bird feeders, defunct lawn mowers - melding together in a sculptural assemblage. beyond an arbor of rusty bicycles and swaying lady’s mantle, the three sisters garden stretches out from the shop and behind owner richard richardson’s home. not wanting to impose, i didn’t tour the gardens (this time) but they include windowed arbors, a stone and metal dragon, a 16×32′ water garden, a stone amphitheater, a sanctuary for meditation. you can tour all of them here.
i may never recycle another tin can.
after stopping here and looking around, i didn’t feel the need to travel farther (did i mention i was on my bike?) i was so creatively refreshed and inspired by the imaginative assemblages and joy de vive evident in the spotless shop full of carefully restored stoves and the surrounding artful gardens. i only wish i lived next door!
Among the educated and enlightened men of 18th-century America, none was more influential or gifted than Benjamin Franklin. He had few peers who could match his intellect and versatility as author, scientist, inventor, printer, philosopher, and popular moralizer. Being essentially a provincial American, Franklin’s mind turned on practical matters, including the problem of how to heat a room evenly and inexpensively. From these musings came his remarkable Franklin Stoves, the first of which were manufactured in 1744 by Franklin’s friend Robert Grace.They were originally called “Pennsylvania Fire-Places,” and Franklin himself 
wrote the first advertisement to publicize the stove, in which he claimed, “If you sit near the Fire, you have not that cold Draught of uncomfortable Air nipping your Back and Heels, as when before common Fires…being scorcht before, and, as it were, froze behind.” 
Franklin also claimed his product was more efficient than other stoves and fireplaces because it burned less wood, a great advantage indeed for those who lived where wood was in short supply. Since Franklin lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, not far from one of the world’s great coal regions, one can only be amused by his statement in 1744 that, by the use of his Pennsylvania Fire-Place, ” . . . our Wood may grow as fast as we consume it, and our Posterity may warm themselves at a moderate Rate, without being oblig’d to fetch their Fuel over the Atlantick…”
