Jack and I bought some forested land, and began hunting a good deal on a wood stove. When a brand-new one popped up on marketplace super-cheap, the nice man we bought it from loaded it into our truck with his brother. They slid a cheap piece of plywood under it to keep the legs from digging the carpet.
There it lay for the next three weeks, feet toward the steering wheel, aimlessly humming a tune to itself as it waited… and waited… and waited….
We tried friends, family, neighbors. Everybody was busy. It’s a hard time of life and a hard time of year. Plus, we really hate to be those sweet-but-annoying elderly neighbors who need help every twenty minutes.
But when my opportunity to pick up a full load of donations for a community project coincided with the stove still taking up 2/3 of the trunk, Jack and I did some math and hatched a plan.
We gathered every quilt, duvet, and rug in the house, including a sheep fleece headed to some community work of its own next week. We added three tarps, drove to the property, and piled the soft stuff as high as the bumper of the car, fleece below a tarp to avoid the barnyard smell. Positioning the car’s bumper right at the edge of the softy pile, we wiggled the stove out moving each corner of the plywood a couple of inches at a time, left right, left right, until the inevitable was about to happen. When the stove tilted, I held it in place while Jack raced to the driver’s seat and pulled the car forward a foot.
Thing came down like gentle snow.
We rocked it onto its feet, covered it with tarps, kissed each other soundly, and piled the soft stuff back into the car so I can wrap it around the furniture and other donations going to the community project.
Neither of us went to the hospital. We didn’t hurt the stove. We are still married we didn’t swear once.
Next up: how do the elderly couple get the stove up four steps into the house? Good question. We’ll figure it out. Or hold a barbecue and invite strong friends.
Wendy Welch: Books, Yarn, Cats, Opioids 
Ha! I have used the same method! As a single female approaching 70 when I moved over the mountain to a new community I had several pieces that didn’t come in a moving van but the back of my car. One, an old radio/record player and wire recorder from the late 1940’s got in the house by backing up to the step into the kitchen from the garage where I was able to slide the piece (heavy for a 4′ 8″ 115 lb old lady alone} onto the towel covered kitchen floor by inching the tarp it laid on slowly out of the trunk. Long ago I learned by trial and error that a small person can pull heavy furniture on an old towel to new locations or positions without damaging the item or the floor. Just takes a while.but usually easy peasy. My kids still are amazed when they come and I have moved furniture and not called for help. never had any kind of injury or discomfort from using the “old towel leverage system” ,
Queenagers rule! We may be using the plywood up the steps method and we will defo be using old blanket across the floor once we get it in the house. We did think about the straight across method but there was a 3-foot gap and we sensed disaster. :[