In Goshen, salvaging cast-iron stoves isn’t just a business — it’s an art.
I spent my childhood in the backseat of a car driving Route 112 from Ashfield to Northampton. At the Goshen border, I would always gaze out my window at the cluttered and colorful exterior of the Good Time Stove Company.
The showroom is full of antique stoves looking for a home (they often are bought by Hollywood set decorators, most recently by a designer for the Quentin Tarantino western The Hateful Eight). But it is the outside of the building, set just a few yards back from the road, that has always enchanted me.
The company’s most prominent character — the giant “Tin Man of Goshen” — stares intensely out at the passing cars with menacing hand tools and a ghoulish grin. But visitors who pull up, park the car, and look closer will see smaller faces emerge from these ornate walls of scrap.
A plastic skeleton rides the rusted corpse of a bicycle. Doll heads, adorned with plastic toy pieces and re-glued bits of ceramic and glass, gaze beatifically into the distance. One rescued mannequin, given angel wings and a rainbow body, stands jauntily against a wall, like John Wayne cast as an extra in Pippin.
These are the strange rural secrets that make America road trips worthwhile. More than that: these are my oldest, strangest friends.
— Hunter Styles, hstyles@valleyadvocate.com
