With luck, new lamp won't need string to stay upright

When your favorite floor lamp only stays upright because it’s been lashed securely to a nearby end table with 10-ply string, it could be time for a replacement. 

So it is at my house, which has triggered a shopping expedition into the overwhelming array of choices that exist to bring illumination to our homes. 

One online retailer I looked at offers more than 4,000 selections for floor lamps alone. Yikes. 

It’s a good week to appreciate my grandparents’ kerosene lamps. 

Electricity is a far more reliable utility here than it was when I was growing up, but even the best systems can’t always withstand the ferocities of High Plains wind or line-destroying ice storms. 

We have always kept alternate sources at the ready here — candles on the fireplace mantle, flashlights on nightstands and by doors, and our collection of “coal-oil” lamps. 

As best as I can remember — and the number of people who can challenge me on this are few and far between — these lamps were brought here by my grandparents who built the first part of this house. 

Originally fueled by distinctively smelly kerosene, the wicks now sip from unscented lamp oil, a definite improvement. 

Each time we have the need to light our lamps, I am filled with gratitude that I still have them, and that they are as reliable as the day they were built far over a century ago. 

I think about all the hands that have carefully lifted each fragile chimney to light the wick with a flaming match. 

I think about the different settings in which those lamps have burned.  

I have no proof that they made the covered wagon trip with my father’s family from Pecos, Texas, to the ranch, but I like to believe they did, with the chimneys separated and wrapped in quilts to keep them safe on the journey. 

I can imagine at least one of them being unwrapped and lit each evening as the sun set on the 17 days it took the family to come here, and how the light from even one of those lamps must have provided immense comfort and security against the dark unknown. 

I can picture these lamps in the various wooden shacks my ancestors lived in over the years that followed, flickering against walls that did little to keep out wind or sand or heat or cold, but that managed to keep a family together. 

I know these lamps burned for many weeks in this house during a marathon ice-storm outage in 1960 as my parents cared for a firstborn baby boy and comforted my grandfather over the death of my grandmother. 

All this to say that I feel this search for a replacement light for my living room — ideally a new-fangled fixture with a dimmable LED bulb and attached reading lights — can’t possibly result in any form of light that will have the lifespan the oil lamps have had or see what they have seen. 

But with luck (and at the very least), I’ll end up with a light that won’t need to be tied to another piece of furniture to stay upright. 

I’ll call that a win. 

Betty Williamson has low standards when it comes to décor, but even she has to upgrade now and again. Reach her at:

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