Former Barrington Middle School science teacher Emory Pineo is a self-taught repairman who fixes, refurbishes, reconstructs and collects heavy metal heaters. He’s been doing it for a half-century.
“Paleo stoveologist,” Pineo says laughingly. “That’s what we call us.” The “we” he refers to his son, Brandon. He, too, was a school teacher who took up his father’s hobby during summer vacation.
“It suddenly occurred to me, wait a minute, I can’t afford to go back to work. You know, I could stay right here and just be busy,” said Brandon Pineo.
Emory Pineo says when he was a little boy, his mother would send him to an elderly neighbor’s house every Saturday to buy eggs. She would bake cookies and biscuits on her old, wood-fired stove.
“I always wanted that stove. And when she passed away, the stove was in the ground before she was.”
That grievance fired up Emory Pineo’s passion. “I learned by taking hundreds of them apart. The very first one I bought– it was a Barstow stove made in Providence. Then it was three. Now we’re up to four-hundred here at the moment.”
“Some are here as inventory and some are here forever. You know, some of them are just part of the family.”
Included in his stove museum are many rare examples, such as the ornate “Green Island” stove from the 1800s made by prisoners to heat fancy homes. It is one of only ten in existence.
Emory Pineo says he and his son are interested in stoves 100-years-old or older.
“The new ones are really designed for five to seven years. And what the companies do is they’ll sell all these stoves and then they’ll stop making parts. So you can’t even repair them. The one I heat my house with is 1899, still has all its original parts.”
The museum also houses Rhode Island-made stoves. His collection even includes scale-size “salesman samples .”
“There was a stove for every purpose, including one that attached to the running board of an antique car. A kitchenette prep station was attached to the other running board.
Brandon Pineo points out a 1760 tavern stove and imagines colonists gathered around it, having heated discussions about revolution. “There were some pretty tense times” he said.
The Pineos say a fully restored range costs approximately $4,000. And they are in demand worldwide. He says they have been purchased by Hollywood filmmakers. One for the movie, “The Revenant”.
And now, with uncertainty about energy prices, Emory Pineo says many customers want to be less dependent on outside sources.
“They want a stove that’s completely off-grid, and they like the coal stoves in particular. You can buy coal 10 years ahead if you want and store it.”
