At Peace With the Coleman Stove

I have a secret to tell you.
I love Coleman camping stoves!
I don't mean those ones that you screw a bottle of propane to, but the "real" ones. Those naptha / white gas green ones with the red tanks that you pump up and light. I love the blue flame, the smell of the fuel burning and that quiet roar they make as they spew the fuel forth and produce a hot flame.
When I  was in the army, we used to go on exercise in winter (winter indoctrination they would call it). We would hump up and down hills and across fields and through forests on crappy snowshoes, pulling an overloaded toboggan full of rations, ammunition, axes, a ten man tent and of course the precious Coleman stove. When we finally stopped for the day we would unpack the tent. The first guy to crawl under the canvas was the pole man. He would put the pole up and set it into the baseplate and stand there as we stretched the canvas out and started securing the guylines and tentpegs. But even before we had all the pegs and lines nailed in, one of the other guys would crawl in and get the Coleman stove going to heat up the tent. After a long day of slogging through the bush or sitting in an ambush feeling your boots freeze around your feet, the best thing was crawling into that tent already warming with the heat from the two burner stove. It sat there by the entrance roaring away. A good soldier would already have snow melting in the pot ready for coffee and heating up our boil in the foil rations. The Coleman lantern would also be roaring away hanging from a hook on the pole pumping out even more heat. Next we laid out our sleeping bags and mattresses and it wasn't long before wet mitts, socks, boot liners and other assorted articles of clothing were hanging from the clothes drying strings attached to the inside of the tent.
People wonder how we could sleep in those tents in the dead of winter. I kid you not! We were above the arctic circle, it was -80 degrees celsius outside with the windchill and we were sitting in that tent in our shirts as happy as can be with the two burner stove, the lantern and a single burner stove for some extra heat.
We would then set up a stove watch of a couple of hours each. Courtesy was for you to fill up the fuel tanks on the stoves just prior to your relief taking over. Once in a while you got the shaft from someone as you just settled down and suddenly the blue flame would fade away and the hiss died. In the hectic life that being on exercise in the army can be, those 2 hours sitting there in the quiet while the rest of the section slept and only the hiss of the Coleman stove broke the silence....well those moments were golden.
This summer I ended up buying two Coleman stoves.
The first I got at a garage sale for $10. I was a little leery when the guy I bought it off told me how he had used it while fighting forest fires and burned helicopter fuel in it. I got it home and lit it up. It was burning really good when suddenly the whole thing burst into flame. My army training had prepared me for this, having been privvy to a few stove mishaps in the winter tents. I kicked the thing out the garage, shut off the valve and let it burn itself out. When the flames died down it was none the worse for wear so I figured it must have been burning off some of that "alternative fuel" the ex-firefighter was so fond of. I relit it a few minutes later and it burned as it should without further incident.
The second stove I picked up for $1.50 at the Thrift Shop in Boston Bar, BC.  It was a bigger model than the other one. A bigger fuel tank and larger case. It was also old. When I opened it up it was full of dirt and several spiders had built their nests in it. I was skeptical it would work as it was pretty rusty, but I took it back to my mom's and hosed it down to get the spiders out. I brought it back home and it sat in the garage for a couple months. Just tonight I decided to see if it would work. I put some naptha in it. Pumped it up but it wouldn't hold pressure. The fuel was leaking out from the cap. I took the cap off the other stove and got a good seal. I figured the generator was probably bad but after pumping it up and I was welcomed with a hiss so biting the bullet I hung the tank on the stove, pumped it up and lit a match. I was a little cautious after my previous adventure with the firefighter's stove but it lit up just fine and soon I had a nice blue flame. Next I lit the other burner and it too worked!


I stood out there in the driveway as the sun was setting and the darkness of the evening began to creep in. I listened to the stove hiss and roar.  A feeling of peace and warmth came over me and my mind wandered back to the long ago time.