Smoke

 March 21, 2023

At least the fire alarm didn’t go off this time. When I loaded the firebox of the wood stove and noticed it was cold inside, I should have known there wasn’t going to be draft enough to draw the smoke up the chimney. I lit my firestarter, put it in place between two pieces of wood, and opened the door just enough to really get a draw going. Then I made the mistake of stepping out of the room for a minute. When I came back, smoke was curling out the door and filling the room. Frantic doesn’t begin to describe my race to the laundry room for the small fan that would blow the smoke and heat back into the stove and up the chimney. Then I opened windows and doors to air the room out, which sort of defeats the purpose of the fire in the first place. But…the fire alarm didn’t go off!

The smell of the smoke apparently defied my attempts to contain it in the back room. I learned this evening that it woke Linda up on the other side of the house. She really didn’t want to get up at 6:00 am.

The last time the stove malfunctioned was when the clean out cap on the bottom of the stack fell off. It does that when it gets filled with creosote. Without the cap, the chimney doesn’t draw at all, and the back room quickly looks like a London fog and smells like last night’s campfire. On this particular occasion, the alarm went off and I had to run outside, slippers in the snow, while I grabbed the cap, ran into the garage to dump it into the trash before dashing back and hammering the cap back in place, alarm blaring all the while. I’m glad we don’t have security cameras; the footage could be incriminatingly embarrassing.

I can’t think of any life lesson from all this, other than it would probably be a good idea if I take my wife’s advice and use a bit more kindling when starting a fire. Acting like a cave man blowing on embers isn’t endearing myself to Linda. She isn’t shy about reminding me that she never intended to marry a Neanderthal any more than she intended to marry a preacher. She got stuck with the one; I better not press my luck with the other. If I listen real close, God’s voice often has overtones of Linda.