He’s All Aglow Over Old Potbellies

The old schoolhouse in this Calaveras County hamlet has not had any students in 25 years, but it is home to a former mail carrier and nearly 100 of his potbellied friends.

Richard Lenfestey, 53, has filled the two-room Paloma school with turn-of-the-century cast iron stoves.

The Paloma school had been vacant nine years, a victim of the elements and vandals, when Lenfestey bought it in 1972 for $5,250 from the local school district. Then he and his stoves moved in.

“We had a roughhouse crowd around here then. Every door and every desk was removed from the school. The school’s tin roof was dangling in the air from the structure’s sad state of disrepair,” Lenfestey said.

Lenfestey bought his first cast iron heating stove in 1956 from a local rancher for $30. Made in 1857, it is a prized possession.

Turn-of-the-century cast iron stoves have become a full-time pastime for Lenfestey. The Paloma schoolhouse is now the home and headquarters of his Paloma Stove Works. He buys and sells rare potbellied and cook stoves.

“Every year I travel America looking for stoves, finding most of them in the Midwest. They are becoming harder and harder to locate. In the past I would drive 6,000 to 8,000 miles looking for stoves and come home with as many as 50 in a big truck and trailer,” Lenfestey said. “On my last trip I returned with only 15.”

He has a boneyard with thousands of rusted, dirty and grime-encrusted grates, dampers, rings, ash pans, door handles, oven racks and other stove parts. He sells old stoves for as little as $150 and as much as $2,500. Most are ornate with nickel crowns and elaborate scrollwork.

Lenfestey is a throwback. He drives a 1931 Model A coupe. “I found the old Tin Lizzie rusting away on a Lodi farm. I saved it from melting into the ground,” he said.

He grew up in Stockton, where he delivered mail for 16 years. “I would have preferred to have been a fireman on steam engine trains but I came along too late. Steam engines were phased out and replaced by diesels,” he said.

“I have always been fascinated by boilers. So, since I couldn’t be a railroad fireman, I began collecting potbellied and cast iron cook stoves.”

Lenfestey’s sidekick, Lonnie McCraney, 37, lives in Paloma, population less than 100, with his wife and two children. McCraney was a first-to-fourth grade student at Paloma Elementary.

McCraney repairs and restores the old stoves in a shop behind the schoolhouse.

Lenfestey wears a black T-shirt bearing the words “ROUND OAK CHIEF;” McCraney wears a similar T-shirt inscribed with “ROUND OAK MEDICINE MAN.” Most of their stoves are Round Oak, made in Dowagiac, Mich., the furnace capital of America at the turn of the century.

At the time, the P.D. Beckwith Round Oak Stove Co. was the largest potbellied stove manufacturer in the nation. In 1900, its popular four-hole cook stove sold for $27; the most expensive heating stove sold for $36.

Paloma is an old gold mining town 35 miles northeast of Stockton. Gold was first discovered here in 1849. Mining for the precious metal continued off and on until 1909.

Upward of 5,000 people lived here in the gold boom. The town boasted three hotels, two churches, livery stables, stores, several saloons and even a horse race track. Now, among a handful of scattered homes, the only relic of the gold mining days is the schoolhouse, home of the Paloma Stove Works.