When I was a little kid Stephen King used to write his novels in the front room of the house I lived in. He lived across the street and needed a quiet place to write. My folks rented him the office space. As a result we have signed copies of almost everything he wrote throughout the seventies and eighties. I have read the first twenty or so pages of just about every one. As it turns out I don't like horror stories. It really didn't matter if the story was scary at all in the first twenty pages. The mere act of reading a book that I knew to be scary at some point was enough to dissuade me from making it beyond the first chapter or two. Granted, I was in sixth grade when I tried to read them but even today I have little to no interest in the horror genre. The folks got along so well with Stephen King that in 1984 my parents were invited to the Big Time Red Carpet Movie Premier of Firestarter in Bangor, Maine. I remember it well. The two of them going that is not the actual movie, I've still never seen it. They got all dressed up - something that I'd maybe seen twice before. The event made the national news. Well, People magazine, it's not real news but it's at least a national publication. Normally the only time Maine makes the national news is when they run an expose on Oxycodone abuse or Morbid Obesity Rates - still #1 in both, Go Maine!
I bring all this up because one, this was a cheap way for me to tag Stephen King to my blog and two, today I nearly burned our house down. Well, not our house really. More like my Sister's house that is currently under construction. Or perhaps even better described as the house my Mother will eventually retire to. The home my Dearly Departed Father hoped to see finished in his lifetime. It has not yet been defined as to who will live there although we know it won't be me no matter how much the Lovely Girlfriend begs to move to Northern Maine. It is a beautiful house on a lake. My parents dream home if you will. And I was one Mother's intuition away from being the guy that accidentally burned it down to it's foundation. It was a simple mistake. One that I would imagine almost anyone could make assuming they pay very little attention to their surroundings and don't bother to engage in logic or reason. You see, we recently installed a pellet stove. For those of you unfamiliar with the bitter cold winters of Maine, pellet stoves are a lot like wood stoves only you burn wood pellets about the size of a multi-vitamin. They come with feeders and burn pots and all kind of switches and gears that your standard wood stove never had. As it turns out if you don't put the pellets into the feeder box but instead into the slots on top that look a lot like where a feeder box could be you catch the backside of the stove on fire. A fire inside a stove can't be that bad right? That is, after all where fires are supposed to be. Yes, but on the inside inside and not the back inside if you follow me. The back inside is where all the electronics and gears are and when the pellets catch fire there they ruin the whole thing. Also, they almost catch your Sister's house, your Mother's retirement home, you Father's dream home on fire.
How was this prevented? My Mother had a feeling. My Mom has lots of feelings. Most of them crazy. This one was spot on. This is what the call I got at aprox 2:15 sounded like "Call your Sister! The house is filled with smoke!" What? Why? "I can't get to the second floor, the smoke is too thick!" The second fuckin floor! How bout getting out of the house? How about calling 911? My sister has an office job in downtown Bangor I don't think she's the first person to call when you need a fire put out. She's lived in a second floor apartment for the last five years so I doubt she even owns a hose, garden or otherwise. "I can't turn it off! There's flames! I can't make it upstairs!" Yes, because as we all learned from the 1974 classic The Towering Inferno the high ground is exactly what you want to seek out when in a building that's on fire. Call 911 and go outside I shouted into the phone. I hopped into my truck and sped out to the house, reaching 70mph on a bumpy stretch of Stillwater Ave while repeatedly trying to dial my phone. SugarDust was riding shotgun, he didn't enjoy the ride.
We caught up with the fire trucks on the last quarter mile or so of the drive. When we arrived at the house smoke was billowing out of the windows. My Mother was slightly less panicked than she seemed on the phone. After giving it a squirt of water the fireman unhooked the pellet stove and hauled it outside. Once it had cooled they cracked it open and examined the insides. How could this have happened we asked. They didn't know either. At first. After a thorough examination they determined the cause of the fire was idiocy. They never said that specifically but it was pretty clear that only a real moron would do what I did. For the record I only dropped a few handfuls of the stuff down the wrong slot before it occurred to me that couldn't be the right spot. It never occurred to me that such a mistake could result in nearly burning the house down. Thankfully, my Mother felt the need to swing by the house and check on it. Why? I have no idea. Maybe my Dearly Departed Dad wasn't ready to let his dream home go up in flames.
I bring all this up because one, this was a cheap way for me to tag Stephen King to my blog and two, today I nearly burned our house down. Well, not our house really. More like my Sister's house that is currently under construction. Or perhaps even better described as the house my Mother will eventually retire to. The home my Dearly Departed Father hoped to see finished in his lifetime. It has not yet been defined as to who will live there although we know it won't be me no matter how much the Lovely Girlfriend begs to move to Northern Maine. It is a beautiful house on a lake. My parents dream home if you will. And I was one Mother's intuition away from being the guy that accidentally burned it down to it's foundation. It was a simple mistake. One that I would imagine almost anyone could make assuming they pay very little attention to their surroundings and don't bother to engage in logic or reason. You see, we recently installed a pellet stove. For those of you unfamiliar with the bitter cold winters of Maine, pellet stoves are a lot like wood stoves only you burn wood pellets about the size of a multi-vitamin. They come with feeders and burn pots and all kind of switches and gears that your standard wood stove never had. As it turns out if you don't put the pellets into the feeder box but instead into the slots on top that look a lot like where a feeder box could be you catch the backside of the stove on fire. A fire inside a stove can't be that bad right? That is, after all where fires are supposed to be. Yes, but on the inside inside and not the back inside if you follow me. The back inside is where all the electronics and gears are and when the pellets catch fire there they ruin the whole thing. Also, they almost catch your Sister's house, your Mother's retirement home, you Father's dream home on fire.
How was this prevented? My Mother had a feeling. My Mom has lots of feelings. Most of them crazy. This one was spot on. This is what the call I got at aprox 2:15 sounded like "Call your Sister! The house is filled with smoke!" What? Why? "I can't get to the second floor, the smoke is too thick!" The second fuckin floor! How bout getting out of the house? How about calling 911? My sister has an office job in downtown Bangor I don't think she's the first person to call when you need a fire put out. She's lived in a second floor apartment for the last five years so I doubt she even owns a hose, garden or otherwise. "I can't turn it off! There's flames! I can't make it upstairs!" Yes, because as we all learned from the 1974 classic The Towering Inferno the high ground is exactly what you want to seek out when in a building that's on fire. Call 911 and go outside I shouted into the phone. I hopped into my truck and sped out to the house, reaching 70mph on a bumpy stretch of Stillwater Ave while repeatedly trying to dial my phone. SugarDust was riding shotgun, he didn't enjoy the ride.
We caught up with the fire trucks on the last quarter mile or so of the drive. When we arrived at the house smoke was billowing out of the windows. My Mother was slightly less panicked than she seemed on the phone. After giving it a squirt of water the fireman unhooked the pellet stove and hauled it outside. Once it had cooled they cracked it open and examined the insides. How could this have happened we asked. They didn't know either. At first. After a thorough examination they determined the cause of the fire was idiocy. They never said that specifically but it was pretty clear that only a real moron would do what I did. For the record I only dropped a few handfuls of the stuff down the wrong slot before it occurred to me that couldn't be the right spot. It never occurred to me that such a mistake could result in nearly burning the house down. Thankfully, my Mother felt the need to swing by the house and check on it. Why? I have no idea. Maybe my Dearly Departed Dad wasn't ready to let his dream home go up in flames.
Hand lotions, fruit smoothies, failure to operate pellet stoves correctly. Have you also forgotten how to drive a stick shift? Parallel Park? Are you flipping through Cosmo in the checkout aisle?
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