Timber Tales

OK. So I admit it. I'm out of practice, and yes, I should have thought of that before.

Kindling.

If you're gonna have a wood stove, you need kindling.

But I've been really spoiled these last twenty years: turn the round knob on the thermostat and Walla! Instant Heat! Aren't forced-air gas furnaces wonderful?

Trouble is, over the last five years, that sleazy gas company raised its rates. Again and again and ah . . . again. Prices got to be so high I had to find my glasses to read the thermostat. Make sure the indicator was well below 60 degrees.

Folks never removed their coats when they came to visit me. Got so bad I had to buy a coal brazier to warm their feet. It was cheaper than turning up the thermostat.

Got so bad I sold the house just to get rid of the fuel bills. Which put me in a bind. Had all this furniture and no place to board my life collection of treasures.

That's why I rubbed my hands together in glee when this rental house sported a wood-burning stove.

' AH HA! ' I thought. ' Those greedy oil companies aren't going to rake in another whopping price-increase from me! No siree.'

Now I don't mean to offend any of you oil barons rolling around in your Rolls Royces. I know your consciences smite you every time you think of your grandmothers. Living on fixed incomes. Icicles dripping from their sinuses as the poor ole dears shiver in front of the warm airflow duct.

OK. So now it's only an airflow duct. Product availability has rapidly disappeared in the last five years and warm airducts are one of the surplus items deleted from store shelves.

Yep! Seeing that wood-burning stove delighted my eyes and set my heart to singing ditties like "Put Another Log On The Fire", and "Thumb, Thumb, Thumb Your Nose, At Pricing Hikes Supreme, Burning Wood Will Cut The Creosote, Out of Conoco's Dreams".

Which brings us round to kindling.

An undersight, I'm sure, for there was plenty of wood. Huge logs sized nicely to fit into the Blaze King.

However, starting a fire with one piece of newspaper and a log the circumference of a fat elephant's leg doesn't guarantee a rip, roaring fire.

I blew on that sucker until my cheeks developed a permanent pouch. The intensity of the dilemma was skewed out of proportion by the fact that my pucker muscles have atrophied as they reached their sixty-year mark. Blowing anything is a difficult task.

Made me realize that the birthday candle theory is all wrong. There aught-a be sixty-five candles on a one-year-old's cake. Remove a candle per year and by age sixty there would only be five candles to extinguish. It's the highest use of diminishing expirations of old equipment, plus adding a tax-exempt status would then enable the sexagenarian's generation more microenergy power and wouldn't that frost the oil tycoon's cake?

The blizzard whipped the snow around outside and the little Yorkie pup sat beside me and shivered. The small pageantry of flickering flames sputtered, then gasped for air. (Darn! Bet I forgot to open the damper.)

The heck of it is, in principle, wood stoves are so easy to operate. Listen to Smokey Bear's advice when he claims that one careless match can burn an entire forest.

He's wrong, of course.

A WHOLE box of matches, one 12-ounce can of Premium Lighter Fluid, and the entire 32 ounces of Kingsford Charcoal Lighter won't even scorch dry tinder.

I have a hunch that as incinerationary as oil prices are, if the alternative energy solutions are this difficult for the Baby Boomers, they might be a bit dicey for the elite Generation X'ers.

There's a wicker-basket sitting over there in the corner. Odds are, if it was chopped up it would make great kindling.

Problem is, all my neighbors are fortyish. They all have high-end racing bikes but I doubt they have an ax I could borrow.

Most of 'em have skate-skies, though. Resting there right-'an-purty on their front porches. Hmmm . . . Come to think of it, wouldn't those small suckers make excellent fire starters!
Timber Tales © 2005 Chaeli Lee Sullivan