Historic stove restored, returned to SLO County schoolhouse. ‘It’s back where it belongs’

When Brian Snow asked historical author Debbie Soto about her pet project during an annual Father’s Day celebration in Cambria, she didn’t know he was about to kickstart his own restoration project that would focus on — of all things — a stove.

While discussing Soto’s work with the ongoing 1881 Santa Rosa School restoration, the pair — who are both members of prominent Cambria pioneer families — began talking about the school’s original stove.

“Something kept telling me to tell Brian about the stove.” Soto said. “I knew he’s interested in his hometown’s history.”

The appliance was installed in the schoolhouse sometime soon after its construction, but had been removed, then stored for decades in a ranch shed where it became extremely rusty.

Meanwhile, the restored schoolhouse is a historical museum now, owned by the Cambria Historical Society. And those Society members hoped someone could restore the historic stove so it could be returned to a place of prominence in the schoolhouse.

Snow “immediately told me, ‘I’ll do it for free,’” the still astonished Soto recalled to The Tribune in a recent interview. “I had no idea he did that kind of thing.”

At a small gathering in the schoolhouse Oct. 29, more than a dozen people involved with the project came together to celebrate the stove’s restoration and re-installation.

“It looked brand new! I couldn’t believe what a wonderful job the boys had done,” Melody Coe, the society’s board president said. “We’re very pleased, happy and grateful.”

Historic schoolhouse stove was being stored in ranch shed

While some dates are fuzzy — after all, the one-room schoolhouse was built in the late 1800s — there’s general agreement that the steel-and-cast-iron Northwest Stove Works heater from Oregon was likely installed soon thereafter.

Cambria rancher Olimpio Fiscalini removed the stove from the Santa Rosa School slightly before or after it was closed in 1952, about seven decades after it was built.

The students were transferred to a larger, relatively recent school at 1350 Main St., and the little schoolhouse itself would be moved in 1964 to 880 Main St. from the north bank of Santa Rosa Creek.

At the Oct. 29 schoolhouse gathering, Fiscalini’s son, Olie Fiscalini, said his father — who had been on the school board and ran the school for a time — moved the homeless stove around a few times before putting it into a ranch shed.

It languished there for decades, proving that some ranch families do hang onto things for a long time. In this case, it paid off.

As restoration work on the schoolhouse continued, some Historical Society members discussed installing a replica stove in the schoolhouse.

But Soto knew that her uncle Olie Fiscalini had the original in his shed.

“I told him that, ‘It’s time to dig it out,’“ she said.

The rancher immediately agreed, donating it to the Historical Society. But first, he had to enlist some help to clean out other stuff in the shed and on the stove, including some straw and other detritus.

Soon, the scrubbed-up stove was taken by truck to the schoolhouse, while society members pondered how to get it restored.

Brothers restore historic stove for free

Flash forward to the Father’s Day celebration, and Soto miraculously finds the answer the Historical Society has been looking for in Snow.

Soto’s answer to Snow’s original question about the schoolhouse included chapter and verse on the school refurbishing project and the need for “someone to restore the stove,” according to Snow’s mom, Karen Soto Snow.

“Brian immediately volunteered to do it for free,” Debbie Soto said. “Of course, he got his twin brother (Paul Snow) involved as well.”

The men had to wedge the volunteer work into their already busy lives in the Bay Area. Brian Snow works in tech services for the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office, and Paul Snow is an athletic director and teacher at Menlo-Atherton High School.

It wasn’t an easy process.

“The stove ‘barrel’ is made of a higher-grade steel,” Brian Snow said. “The legs and upper/lower pans are made of cast iron. We had to replace most of the original screws with brass ones as the old ones were very rusted. Most of them broke during the dismantling process.”

By far the hardest part of the restoration was removing the rust and grinding it off by hand with an angle grinder to get down to bare metal, both brothers agreed.

They had some crucial help from Paul Snow’s friend, Andrew Sieferman of Crown Sheet Metal & Skylights in Burlingame.

Sieferman “fabricated the custom pieces of the stove pipe” that couldn’t be repaired and for which replacement parts weren’t available, Paul Snow said.

“When he took the stove’s dented, rusted flue to his shop, he spot-welded it by hand, saying, ‘This is very old!’” Paul Snow said.

Brian Snow added that the flue was “all-new duct work.”

“But the stove is 99% original now,” he said.

The brothers repainted the stove with a rust-proof and high-heat-resistant paint, although it’s for show only now, not heating.

‘It’s back where it belongs’

On Oct. 28, after only four months of work in their spare time, the Snow brothers delivered the restored stove to the schoolhouse in which their ancestors had studied.

The brothers reinstalled it and finished the touch-up work the following day before a small reunion of Snow, Fiscalini, Soto and other ranch family and historical society members.

Olie Fiscalini said it means a lot to him to have the stove all ready for its showings to young students.

He recalled attending the Santa Rosa School for years, including in the months before it was closed and moved to its first Main Street site.

“I still have the old oak teachers’ chair from the school,” he said, adding that he sits in it every day.

Soto’s mother, Kathleen Fiscalini Gerhardt, reminisced about being in the schoolhouse’s class the fall after the old stove had been replaced by a wood-burning stove. Eventually, an oil-fueled heater took its place, which other family members say they recall as happening about 1945.

“Mom said she was young and couldn’t remember the year but felt she was in first or second grade,” Debbie Soto said. “My uncle Alfred said it was about 1945, when Muriel Soto began teaching at Santa Rosa.”

Karen Soto Snow talked about when her mother, Dee Soto, was a long-term substitute teacher at the old school.

“She brought us there when she was teaching,” she said. “My sister, Janet Soto Knudsen, loved climbing a big tree alongside the school. Mom introduced us to Olie Fiscalini and his younger brother, Eddie Fiscalini, saying ‘These boys will be going to school with you in the school on Main Street next year.’”

At the reunion of interwoven families, everybody said the occasion was remarkable, but the highlight was seeing the old stove, all fixed and back in the schoolhouse more than seven decades after it had been removed, and about 142 years after it was originally installed.

“It’s back where it belongs,” Snow Soto said.