Archive | September 2025

Mystery Furnace

Sep24

Snow underfoot squeaked with each step I took. It was a sound I learned the meaning of as a kid. It was too cold to play outdoors. Brutally cold breezes moved mist-fine snow particles from place to place in my backyard. Turning toward the woodshed where my husband’s outdoor furnace stood, my breath sent a column of mist into the air. The stovepipe above the furnace sent smoke into the wind as if mimicking the mist.

I didn’t like this furnace. When my husband built it, he promised to take care of its feeding and cleaning. And he did, except when he had to be away like today. Unlike the wood furnace we once had in the basement of our house, this one was large and took huge chunks of wood. I dragged three logs closer to the furnace door and struggled to lift them into the red ember-lined firebox. Having fed an entire tree to the monster, I returned to the house.

Arnie must have not liked the outdoor furnace either. We only used it for two winters. One day, I found him in the basement installing a new furnace. I hadn’t even known he was shopping for a new one! He never told me who he bought it from and unfortunately, I never asked. The brand new, shiny machine was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Arnie admitted, “With the outdoor furnace, we lost too many BTU between the fire and the heat converter in the house.”

This furnace, wherever it came from, burned wood pellets that came in forty-pound bags. A large hopper on the side of it could hold three and a half bags. That usually took care of heating the entire house for a day and a half, but when it was very cold, it needed to be refueled every 12 hours. Arnie took care of most of the refueling of the furnace, but he did all its cleaning and maintenance.

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Fumes

Sep17

Cicadas sighed long, hissing calls from the treetops. I stood a few moments on the back deck, listening to them on that hot, late summer afternoon. The sound of cicadas in August makes me think of bacon sizzling in a pan. When bacon fries, the fat is rendered. Cicadas announce that the fat days of summer are coming to an end.

            I heard Arnie working in the shed. A moment later I peeked in and saw him applying his welding torch to one side of a metal box he was constructing. Realizing I was standing in the doorway, my husband turned off the welder and flipped open his welding helmet. His ruddy face was beaded with sweat and smudged with soot. The acrid smell of hot metal filled the air. A radio in the back of the shed was playing a country western song.

Grinning, Arnie asked, “Have you heard this new song by Toby Keith?”

The voice on the radio sang, “I like talking about, you, you, you, usually. But occasionally, I wanna talk about me!”

I laughed, “That’s a cute song.”

Inspecting his weld seam, Arnie grumbled, “It’s clever, but it isn’t country western although they call it that. Country is starting to sound like pop music. I don’t like the change.”

Glancing around the workshop and seeing large metal plates of various sizes, I asked, “What are you working on?”

Arnie happily explained, “I’m making an outdoor furnace with a water jacket for us. The fire box will have several angles to its roof to efficiently heat the water. The hot water circulates underground into the house where it goes through a heat exchanger and then it comes back to the furnace to be reheated.”

I didn’t know we were getting a new furnace! Seeing my surprise, Arnie hastily explained, “We won’t have to put anymore wood into the basement. The wood can be kept outside in the shed next to the furnace.” I made a face, thinking about middle of the night furnace feedings when it was cold and snowy. As if reading my mind, Arnie added, “We would only have to stoke it once or twice a day. I’d do it before and after work.”

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Girl Meets Country

Sep10

The realtor placed two sheets of paper on the table in front of Arnie and me. He explained, “I’m going to take you to see these two houses this afternoon. Before we leave the office, you might want to look at the spec sheets. You’ll notice both houses are in the countryside, and both have the number of bedrooms, bathrooms and the backyard you want.”  

Each sheet bore the picture of a house for sale. Below the picture was information about the house. One had fifteen hundred square feet of living space, the other had two thousand. One house had a new roof and with the other a new water heater. The yearly property taxes listed for either property made my eyes water.  

Both houses looked nice, but I had trouble taking my eyes off the brick house. It looked inviting, warm, and friendly. My gut feeling was that it looked like a home…my home. When we toured it, Arnie and I liked what we saw, despite its many faults. The house was built over fifty years before I was born. Some remodeling had been done, some of it very poorly. It was branded with the colors and products of the 1970’s mobile home industry. Most shocking to me, was that the house had two furnaces! One was an oil furnace, and the other was a wood furnace.

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A Special Treat

Sep3

The alarm clock buzzed and progressively became louder until I slid out of bed to turn it off. Only the light of a waxing moon and a sprinkle of stars illuminated the darkness outside our bedroom window. Arnie turned on the bedside lamp and quickly slipped on blue jeans and a plaid shirt. He glanced at me, still in my nightgown and standing next to the bed, rubbing my eyes. He urgently advised, “Hurry up! Get dressed. Gene and Thelma will be here in half an hour.”

“Who are you?” I snapped grumpily. “You certainly can’t be my husband. He never gets up without a fight.”

Pinching me playfully, Arnie happily explained, “We’re not getting up for work. We’re getting up to start our vacation!”

Our two-truck caravan, each pulling boats, reached the north shore of Lake Superior just as the sun started to rise above the horizon. I spotted a breakfast diner and sighed, “Breakfast, at last!”

Seven hours later we stopped for lunch at a Canadian café. Poutine was on the menu, so of course we ordered some. Gene dug into the gravy drenched, cheese-curd-dotted, French fries and announced with a shrug, “It’s a weird way to eat French fries, but since we’re in Canada, we should give it a try.”

The next two days, Thelma and Gene fished from their boat while Arnie and I fished from our boat. They often quietly sat with bobbers floating on the water. Arnie preferred trawling through bays and inlets. We all caught fish.

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