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Depending on where you live, staying warm can be a challenge. And the sources of heat are many. Growing up, I recall a whole catalog of ways we kept warm, and most of them weren’t the kind you controlled with a remote.

My earliest memories of heat don’t come from a thermostat. They come from a wall. Specifically, a wall heater in the sole bathroom of our house on Beech Street in Ashdown, Arkansas.

That heater was white, looked porcelain, and had a chrome knob near the bottom. It didn’t have a digital display. It didn’t have a “smart” setting. It didn’t have a schedule. It had one knob, and that knob required significant hand strength.

The knob turned on the gas. Then you needed the other hand to strike a match. My mom could turn on the gas, light the match, and discipline my sister and me all at the same time.

I’ve brought up the white ceramic bathroom heater around other folks from that era, and it seems to be a common thread. If they didn’t have one in their home, their grandmother did. If their grandmother didn’t, their aunt did. And if none of those relatives had one, they at least remember being warned about one.

“Don’t ever touch this,” mom warned.

We got the same warning about anyone who had stand-alone Dearborn Heaters. The ones where the grates got so hot, they turned orange.

For much of the rest of the house, the fireplace was a big source of heat. Today, many people have fake logs and natural gas in their fireplace, but decades ago, wood burning was common.

At my house, it still is.

My wife and I installed a wood stove in our current home soon after we moved in. We grew up around it. There is something familiar about it. Something honest.

In the homes of my grandparents’ generation, wood provided the fuel for cooking and heating. For cooking, you had to know how much oak, how much heat, and how much time with a wood stove. It wasn’t guesswork. You didn’t learn it from a book.

You learned it because your warmth and supper depended on it.

Between the 1920s and 1950s, a cheaper and easier option in Southern homes became common: the floor furnace.

A floor furnace wasn’t vented. The heat simply emanated from the floor. The good part about floor furnaces was how much money you saved. The bad part? ER bills for treatment of falling toddlers who branded their palms and elbows.

Each winter, Dad would have to clean the chimney and have the gas company come out to service and check the floor furnaces.

My job was to keep the fireplace fed with wood. It still is.

But there’s still something about being part of the process that keeps you warm. Handling the wood is hard work now that leads to comfort later. It’s a similar feeling to growing and harvesting your own food. It’s not just about the heat. It’s about what you did to earn it.

And as long as I can, I’ll keep the options open. Stay flexible.

Fireplaces, floor furnaces and bathroom heaters.

You never know when someone might need help lighting an old bathroom heater.

— John Moore is a Whitehouse resident. Email him at John@TheCountryWriter.com. To buy his book, “Write of Passage: A Southerner’s View of Then and Now Vol. 1 and Vol. 2,” visit www.TheCountryWriter.com.