In view of the recent cold weather this is a valid question. The treatment of the question is not an attack on the validity of the cost of fuel used to heat our homes. For the sake of expediency, we will all agree at this point that heating costs are high.

Without delving into the specific points of what fuel we use or the method used to utilize the fuel we will assume that families in our area use natural gas, propane gas, electricity, coal or wood burning heaters.

People are talking about their gas and electricity bills. With few exceptions the bills are high and people lament over the amount. Earlier in the day, a mother told about her natural gas bill being $400 and the electricity bill being $200. That $600 is a big swipe of a person’s take home pay no matter what they earn.

Again, let me emphasize the words today are not intended to criticize the cost of our heating bills. I don’t know how to analyze the expense in providing fuel to heat our houses. The comments today are designed to ask why the bills are high and how they came to be that way.

To do an adequate job in this discussion it will be necessary to use the literary method of comparison and contrast. In simple terms, we are going to look at how we do things now and how they were a couple of generations ago.

We are far removed from the days of the 1940s and ‘50s. So, let’s first take a look at practices in our culture today. It is Tuesday night and I sit in a well heated house as I write. Other members of the family are in at least two other rooms and they are well heated on this chilly night. In fact, we could be in any of 10 rooms or three bathrooms and we would be in a warm room.

The fact just stated should be enough to cause one to realize things are different than when my generation was younger. To compound the situation let me note that the whole house has been kept warm to a certain degree all day long even with no one at home most of the day. Modern families, as a rule, come home and enter a house that is in a comfortable range.

And we all wonder and question about high heating bills.

It would be of little value to try to tell a younger generation about “how things used to be.” They haven’t experienced those days and find it hard to believe adults when they describe conditions in an era long gone.

Still, for the benefit of younger generations and to take those of my generation back to another age, I am going to tell of a time when heat bills weren’t high. And you will see why.

Today, I sat in the kitchen at my sister Kayanne Walraven’s house at 900 South Wall Street. We moved there in 1945 from the farm located on Hwy. 41 just south of the Union Grove Road. Kayanne and I reflected on life as it used to be.

The house was comfortable and cozy. We never had air conditioning so attention is now given to living conditions when the weather was cold and warmth was the concern. I am sure our living conditions were much like everyone else. Frugality was the rule for our forefathers and it is my task to explain how it was practiced.

I mentioned the kitchen. That was where we lived. It was in that room heated by a space heater that the whole family ate our meals and stayed until bedtime. The heater in the bathroom was never lit until someone took a bath and when they finished it was immediately turned off. The living room heater was used very infrequently. The bedrooms had no space heaters.

All that is said to say our gas bill was very small. So was everyone’s. The family was always together in that one room. Life was similar on the farm except the one bedroom was warmed by a fireplace. A wood-burning stove allowed comfort in the kitchen during meals. Oh, we had to cut trees and chop wood.

Now compare that to our central heated and air conditioned houses. Creature comfort has captured our minds and hearts. We want warmth in the winter and coolness in the summer. So, do we all now know why out utility bills are high?