HEATING WITH WOOD

 …or ‘a house afire’…

 

It was the kind of day they make picture postcards out of. Coursing through vineyards in the late November chill on my Italian motorbike, the byways between Cloverdale and Calistoga were the perfect venue for an early winter sojourn. I found myself consumed by the light of the low sun and what it offered the autumn colors of the oaks and vines. The whisps of high cirrus clouds foretold of a change in the weather. Better get the ridin’ in today.

Up a rise and around a bend I motor from valley-floor vineyards into a creek-carved canyon of black oak, with their amber leaves and, in just the right locales, stands of coastal redwoods. Channeling through one of those groves, a rough two-rut drive leads to someplace I’ll not trespass, but as I pass by, down that lane I see a curly-cue of smoke rising from a rustic chimney in a vintage rooftop.  

Actually, I smelled it first. In the early morning cool, the chimney smoke had settled along the creek and roadway reminding me of the days when wood heat was the only decent heat in our house.

 

Beebo and I were considered old enough to be left home alone while Mom and Dad attended the evening PTA meeting at Rosedale School. I’m sure the instructions we’d been given we forgot – or ignored – as soon as the back door closed so forgive me if I can’t remember the specifics of those instruction now. That said, one of them was probably, “Leave the Franklin Stove alone."

We’d moved into the old house on five acres in the late 50s. Mom said it had once been the barn for the house next door and we never questioned that even though, thinking back on it, we’d never heard of a barn with two bedrooms, a bath and a half, a living room and a nicely appointed kitchen. What the barn didn’t have was effective heat. A natural gas line ran from the street to the house serving a water tank and a heater carved into a plaster wall. But when the first bill of winter arrived, both parents gasped in unison – which was odd because they rarely agreed on stuff – and soon we were told to wrap ourselves up in winter.  Gas was too damned expensive. Fortunately, Mom was quite adept at knitting, so never was there a dearth of sweaters into which her two boys could wrap themselves.

Still, not heating with the wall mounted furnace in the front room seemed, well, stupid, so one day, Dad went down to Collier Hardware and came home with a cast iron Franklin fireplace. Franklin fireplaces were purported to have been an invention of Ben Franklin himself and known for their heating efficiency. The iron box was set on the linoleum floor of the living room and since Musty’s dad – from just down the road a piece – was handy, our dad called him to cut a hole in the ceiling and the roof and help install and flash the new chimney pipe.

“You’re going to need to put a damper in the pipe,” Musty’s dad said.

“A damper?” Dad asked. “You mean like a wet towel or something?”

“No. A damper is a plate placed in the stovepipe with a handle on it so you rotate the thing and control how much heat and air goes up the pipe.”  After installation he demonstrated. “Turn the thing this way with the handle parallel and the smoke goes up the chimney. Turn it perpendicular and the plate doesn’t let the smoke go out so good and eventually the fire will go out, choked on its own smoke.” 

Or something like that.

That afternoon, dad wadded up some sheets of the Enterprise Record newspaper – “at least that rag is good for something” – put some light kindling on top, tossed in a chunk of almond wood and set a match to it. He shut to stove doors but through the open vents in those doors we could see the flames ripping through the paper and setting the kindling to popping. After a few minutes, the flames died away and through those vents we could see the almond wood aglow. Soon the cast iron was radiating the kind of heat that meant we could return our sweaters to the cedar chest. 

Expertly, we thought, Dad rotated the damper a quarter turn and almost immediately smoke began to billow out the open door vents. He shut the vents and the fire relaxed.

“In a few minutes, the fire will suffocate,” he said, so he partially opened the damper and cracked open the vents. The living room would be cozy this evening.

 

Beebo and I should have been paying better attention.  Because it wasn’t more than a few months later when Mom and Dad, engaged in their parently duties chose to attend the evening PTA meeting over at Rosedale School.

I’m not sure what possessed us to see how hot we could make that Franklin Stove, but what possessed us doesn’t really matter now does it? Out back of the house stood about a twenty year supply of almond wood. Dad had pulled out the orchard of aging trees and replaced them with new ones. “The wood from the old orchard will keep us warm for years!” he said.

As soon as they left in the old Ford, we snuck out to the woodpile and carried back as much as our arms could hold. Beebo burnt his fingers trying to open the stove’s already hot doors, so I got a potholder from the kitchen.  We stuffed in as many logs as we could and stood back. With the vents open, the supply of oxygen was more than adequate to set the new fuel ablaze. Not certain how long it took, but the popping of the fresh wood soon became a roar. We stood back and enjoyed the warm fruits of our efforts until one of us noticed that right when the stovepipe disappeared into the ceiling, the pipe had begun to glow. Even as inexperienced pre-teens, we knew this was not good.  Beebo hustled up to the door and touched the vents. He jumped back uttering a word I’d never heard him utter before. (I’m not sure what it was, but I’m pretty sure I’ve uttered it more than a few times in my subsequent years for various reasons.)

I handed him the potholder and he used it to twist the damper a quarter turn.  “That should take care of it,” he said, standing back.  And it did.  Within minutes the glow at the top of the pipe began to fade, but smoke began to pump out through the open door vents.  Thick smoke.  Angry smoke.  Smoke smarter than two little boys.

We didn’t keep track of what we did so we didn’t know how to ‘un-did’ it.

“Let’s open up the door and pull out some of those logs,” I said.

“You do it, dummy.”

I didn’t.

The room was filling with choking smoke, but the chimney had cooled, we hoped. 

Beebo twisted the damper around and around. Stepping aside, the fire set to roaring again and the pipe took on that cherry glow.

“Call 911!” one of us said.

“There is no 911. This is the 1960s!”

“Then call Dad!”  

“How?”

“Call the school. Maybe Mrs. Bossard (the school secretary) is in the office! She’s alwaysthere!”

The Mrs. Bossard’s desk phone rang and rang and rang while one of us again fiddled with the damper twisting it this way and that.

“Sideways! Sideways!”

We must have gotten it right because that glow subsided, and then one of us remembered: “Close the little vents on the door. That’s what Dad would do!”

The hot pad proved handy and once all was shut down, we stepped away from the stove.  The smoke in the room burned our eyes and was thick enough to taste. And Mom and Dad would be home soon.

Thinking like the Cub Scout that Beebo was, he said, “You open the front door and the windows and I’ll get that big box fan outta the closet.”

Plugged in, the fan was just beginning to push air through the front door while Beebo and I were frantically waving dampened bath towels at the two open double-hung windows when Mom and Dad arrived.

 

I can’t recall the consequence, but as I drove past that little cabin in the redwoods on my motorcycle, I thought, “Holy cow! This is Thanksgiving holiday week. The kids are probably home. Alone? Hopefully not. They could burn the whole damned house down.”

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Church of the Open Road Press