The author’s watch-pug stands guard over a fire of manageable size.
PHOTO BY BRUCE RUSHTON
Gas fireplaces can’t compete with the snap-crackle-pop of real wood burning within a hearth turned wonderfully warm by glowing embers of oak, hickory and maple. So it is that my wife and I spend way more on firewood than we should each fall, stockpiling and going through more than a full cord of wood by spring, which is not much compared to back in the day, when I was raised in a home heated solely by a wood-fired furnace.
Back then, we’d go through, each year, at least four cords of Douglas fir, the ubiquitous tree of the Pacific Northwest where I grew up, cutting and splitting the stuff ourselves each summer until the backyard woodpile grew to such proportions that neighbors surely talked amongst themselves about the hillbillies next door. It was anything but chestnuts roasting by open fires. Rather, the wood went into the furnace in our attached garage and heat came pouring out through a large hole cut in our living room wall. On cold mornings, the chair closest to that hole was the most coveted spot in a house where breath was visible in bedrooms with doors kept closed so as to keep warmth concentrated in communal areas. What we saved on heating oil was spent on sweaters and long johns.
Not much came out on the rare occasions we cleaned the chimney, perhaps owing to the quality of the well-seasoned wood we burned and the size of the blazes built to ward off hypothermia. Creosote is nature’s napalm, so burn it with big fires as it’s produced before it can build up and cause real problems. Who needs a chimney sweep more than once every five years? That’s how I figured things, my wife’s admonitions notwithstanding. And I knew what I was talking about, having grown up in a wood-heated house and all.
I had just built a hearty-as-usual fire a couple seasons ago when I heard an odd clanking sound. Clank. Then silence. Clank, clank. Brief silence. Clank, clank, clank-ity, clank, clank, clank. Then hardly any silence, followed by a lot more clanking.
It was difficult to discern exactly where this sound was coming from, but it wasn’t hard to guess. I headed for the door to have a look from the driveway, encountering my wife en route.
“What’s that sound?” she asked.
“What sound?” I responded as I hurried outside.
A chimney fire at night is a spectacular sight, once it really gets going, and ours was going pretty good. The metal chimney cap was glowing cherry red whilst zillions of orange sparks shot skyward, not extinguishing themselves for an amazingly long period of time, even after falling on our roof and the roofs of our neighbors. Our chimney had become a giant sparkler.
We live a few blocks from a firehouse, and Martha was pretty worked up. She threatened to call 911, then leave so that I could explain this to firefighters who would respond with “what-an-idiot” stares before hosing down our hearth, leaving us and our insurer to clean up the mess. I suggested a wait-and-see approach and pointed out that asphalt roof shingles are fireproof.
I cannot say how long we stood out there, staring and weighing whether we should call the fire department or just let our house burn down. We had a lively discussion. After what seemed like forever, the volume of sparks diminished and we went back inside. It was a good thing, I thought, that we had not allowed more creosote to build up.
We have since become big fans of chimney sweeps. Every fall, whether we need it or not. And we now have a three-log rule that has reduced our firewood bill.
You can’t be too careful.
Contact Bruce Rushton at [email protected].
