“I Slept Like Firewood”
Rene Auberjonois in the Bob Newhart Show
In memory of Sheldon
and For Ronak
Perhaps it was the fond memories of camping with my dad in the Adirondacks feeding logs into a fire in front of our lean-to. Or perhaps it was one memory, my good friend Sheldon and I gazing into the flames licking the walls of his fireplace, and the two of us simply enjoying the primeval warmth and security a wood fire brings to friends. In any case, several years after we purchased our home, we decided to add a fireplace to the abode. We hired a well-recommended fireplace builder, Mr. Angotini, who showed up one cold late autumn day along with his three sons to begin construction.
“Is it bad to lay bricks in the cold?”
“Cold does not bother us. Can’t lay bricks in the rain though.”
And so Polley, I, and our four year old Christie watched Mr. Angotini and sons lay brick after brick. At their lunch break, Christie turned on the television, chose PBS, and squatted in front of the tv with her peanut butter and jelly sandwich to watch Oscar and his devious exploits on Sesame Street. Mr. Angotini and sons munched on ham sandwiches and watched as well. It was only until forty minutes had passed that we all realized Christie had disappeared to her bedroom to play with her dolls and that we six adults were still engrossed in the reformation of Cowboy X and Grover.
Two days later, our fireplace, built from recycled bricks that once were the faces of buildings in Philadelphia, was finished. Now the firewood frenzy commenced. For a fireplace to work, firewood needs to be procured. As an economically strapped teacher with four children, I found myself becoming an opportunist, wishing, literally, for windfalls, cruising the neighborhood for downed branches. March is a great month. After weeks of collecting, sorting, and stacking, I became an expert at firewood selection: kindling, little sticks, big sticks, logs. Another credit to my college education.
Eventually I had to face the fact that scavenging for neighborhood blowdowns was not going to provide me with sufficient fuel to warm us during the winter months. Years ago I watched a reality show focusing on nine families pretending to be 19th century pioneers in the Oregon backwoods. Each family spent considerable time chopping wood in preparation for the cold northwest winters. Experts at the end of the show evaluated each family’s wood supply. They agreed that the “team” who had cut down and stacked four cords of wood would not make it through November. Four cords is a lot of hard fibrous material!!
So I bit the bullet, saved up, and researched the suppliers of fireplace fuel. The first I chose was a father and son business from central Pennsylvania who unloaded the cord of wood and dumped it on my front lawn. My neighbors suspected I intended to initiate a bonfire which might engulf their homes, so I unearthed my children’s little red wagon from the mound of toys in the garage, and after a hundred or so trips from the front yard to the back yard, I had a nicely stacked cord of wood in the outer limits of my property. “Nicely stacked” does not mean the same as “solidly stacked,” and one March day, during one of those windfalls I once so eagerly awaited, the stacked cord of wood became, once again, a piled cord of wood. At least it was good exercise.
After several winters I needed to order another cord of wood. I found a supplier online that charged only fifteen dollars to stack the wood it delivered. We arranged a day for delivery so I could show them where I wanted the stack. I came home from work one day to find a cord of wood piled in my driveway with a note: “Was able to deliver early—subtracting stack fee.”
Out came the little red wagon.
That cord lasted a few more winters until I ordered again from the same supplier. I came home from work one day to find the cord stacked against my house—an optimum location for termites, and a note: “Did not know where to stack, so stacked here. Thanks for your purchase.”
I was very happy not to have discarded the little red wagon.
Keeping the fireplace fed is not the only skill a fire builder needs to develop. There is the actual construction of the fire that needs to be mastered. The very first subskill—–and this is an extremely important one—-is to NOT trust your memory. No matter that your brain is absolutely convinced that you had opened the damper for the flue—check to make certain that the flue is open. On several occasions, ignoring this subskill, our family room and kitchen resembled the last moments of the Poseidon Adventure, replete with clanging smoke alarms and smoke stung eyes.
While camping, my father challenged me to make different kinds of fires using his terminology: tripod fires, Indian pole fires, log cabin fires. The greatest challenge involved making a fire when it rained and the forest was soaked. I hunted the woods for white birch bark to use as a starter. Sometimes it is also challenging to build a fire in the fireplace. Forget those movies, especially those from the forties and fifties, in which Rock Hudson, while seducing Doris Day, applies a small paper match to a log and has instant flaming logs. I tried that and it does not work. A fire has to be constructed just so, newspaper, kindling, sticks, logs. A fire also has to be watched. We have experienced some interesting moments when a log has crashed through the fireplace screen, spewing sparks.
Since our fireplace has become an integral part of our winter home, I notice hearths in movies. There is a scene in Citizen Kane, shot in Orson Welles’ stylized depth of field, when Kane stands next to his fireplace while addressing his wife who is working on a jigsaw puzzle apparently fifty yards away in the same room! The fireplace is so large that Kane could walk into it and still have yards of headroom, and the “logs” stacked in the hearth represent the culling of an entire forest. The mantle could be used as a cobblestone NASCAR raceway. I would have to spend my entire waking days scouring the state in order to provide the fuel to feed that monster.
Still, it is my favorite cinematic fireplace. And despite the extra tasks involving in maintaining an indoor fire, (including those damp spring days when the collected ashes become mildewed and eye stinging), I enjoy the huddling around the hearth. There are those moments, logs ablazing, when I believe I share a common joy with Neanderthal Man (besides sharing an IQ), basking in the warmth and security of a fire, a primeval feeling of well-being. Sometimes the simplest and oldest of traditions bring us the greatest comfort. Throw another log on the fire.