Now, we don’t actually have a fireplace as such. We have one of those Franklin-type wood–burning stoves. It’s the kind that vents out our back wall before making a turn to the roof. This old creature is one of the few things that made it through Hurricane Ike. It was badly rusted, but one of the Galveston firefighters’ family has been in the funeral monument business for years, so he sandblasted the whole thing for us. Thanks again for that, Jab. We then painted it with that paint that can take high heat. Looks really good, too.
It
is made so we can burn wood in it, but because of several factors, we stick to
those fake ones that burn for two hours and then are gone. So Chris put one of those logs into the
fireplace and we settled down to watch a few episodes of Classic Doctor Who and
sew. Chris rarely just sits and watches
TV. She has to be doing something. I, on the other hand, consider relaxing on
the couch and struggling to stay awake enough of a challenge.
Now,
we never have been completely sure which way is open and closed for the
flue. When I start a fire I have to
check every time. After all, how often
do we have cold enough weather in Galveston for a fire? Well, this time we forgot to
double-check. And this time we guessed
wrong. At least for a while. The fire had been burning for at least twenty
or thirty minutes when Chris commented, “It sure is getting hazy in here.” I hadn’t noticed. Or if I had, I attributed it to the quality
of production back in 1967 or maybe my glasses were dirty or maybe I was just
too old or too tired to care. But as it
turned out, she wasn’t the only one who recognized the smoke. So did our smoke detectors. All five of them. Oh do they ever work well. By the time we actually got up and realized
that our house was literally filled with smoke, the five noise-makers were
making a racket that I thought sure would wake up Station Four over at the
airport. At first we just fanned the
detectors with a towel, our usual tactic when the one near the kitchen goes off
after culinary episodes. But this event
required more than a cursory swoosh or two.
We opened windows and doors. We
checked the flue and went outside to see if smoke was venting through the
chimney. We turned on ceiling fans. We even made sure the heater came on so the
blower would work to suck some of the tainted air through the return
vents. Chris told me to try breaking up
the log so it would burn faster. That
made the fire flare up enough that I could see for sure that the flue was now
open, but it didn’t really help our immediate smoky dilemma. Meanwhile Mom was covered up on the couch
under a blanket wondering why it was so cold all of a sudden. The noise finally stopped, and the smoke
gradually dissipated, leaving a fine layer of soot around the house. We breathed a sigh of relief, changed the
channel, and settled back down.
And
after about an hour, Mom sat up, glanced from side to side with a puzzled look
on her face, and asked, “What happened to the fire in the fireplace?” What happened, indeed, Mom. What happened, indeed.
Acts
2:2-4 says, “Suddenly a sound like the
blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where
they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and
came to rest on each of them.”
Father,
I have to admit that this was not the verse I was thinking of when we were
fighting that smoke. But thank you for
the beauty and warmth that fire does provide.
Oh, and, could you help us remember next time that the knob pulled out
means the flue is open? Or was it the
other way? Amen.
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