The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Don’t panic yet, but the rats are here! We killed one yesterday with a trap half the size of a bear trap. But its brethren look in the window at night and climb up the walls looking for an easy entry. Rats. Is there a more loathsome beast? On four legs anyway….?

Some years back we thought we had mice so I set the traps one night and figured we’d be rid of them by breakfast. About 2 in the morning I awoke to the rattle Thump rattle Thump thump of the trap whapping the floor again and again, a deranged clatter disturbing my precious sleep. Wearily, I climbed the stairs bollicky-bare, expecting to find Mickey in the trap still alive. I dreaded whatever mayhem would follow for the Final Solution. Imagine my naked surprise discovering a rat in the mousetrap, big loathsome longtailed rodent, bearer of Black Plagues and bubonic fever. Yiiii!

Without hesitation I grabbed a nearby broom and whacked that rat a couple of good ones. Only to see him free himself from the puny trap he’d previously had no luck escaping from…. Now it was mano y mano, two naked mammals tooth to tooth, broom to hairless tail, both of us hopping wildly, half crazed in the dim kitchen light, whap, slap, whack and then … oh sweet baby Huey, the four legged vermin jumped off the opening to the downstairs, a 10 foot drop to the slate floor and landed … I couldn’t believe it! … at the open door to our bedroom.

Where the mizzus was sleeping the unsuspecting snooze of the guiltless. I took the stairs two at a time, my heart beating ferociously as if I were being hunted, not Mickey Rat. Oh man, that cornered varmint could be anywhere. I listened for scrabbling, I waited in the dark stock still, I wished I had pants on!!! I could hear clocks ticking, the fridge gurgling, a faucet dripping … but no rat sounds. Us two adversaries waited, waited some more, waited just as we have since time immemorial.

Finally I gave up and went to bed. Pulled the covers up over my head. Tight. For the time being, I ceded territory. And sleep. Tomorrow, though … tomorrow we’d see who was boss. Tomorrow, mister, we’d see who wore the pants in this house, yessir. Tomorrow….

I was a scrawny little kid back in high school. No muscles, no particular athletic aptitude, just a tall skinny teenager with a face full of zits who moved around the country a lot, odd kid out. I ended up in a northern Wisconsin high school where the jocks ruled the roost. If we’d had a beach nearby, I’d have eaten a lot of sand. We had P.E. teachers who studied in the Hermann Goebbel School of Sadism, the sort of men who dragged kids out of the pool by their hair if they had hair enough to grab. The kind of Nazis who, on days when snow covered the tennis courts in the spring, would set up a game indoors they called Casketball. It was a hybrid between basketball and rugby. You got the ball, everyone could tackle you. On the hardwood floor of the gym. Then the rest were expected to pile on. Kids got hurt a lot in that game. Naturally, the star athletes could sit the ordeal out, no need to lose a Letterman to the instructors’ gladiatorial instincts. One of my buddies got rammed into a volleyball pole and skewered badly in the face with a bolt protruding out of its attachment hole. The game, of course, went on after one of the coaches took him to the nursing station. The P.E. teachers would bet on their classes to win. At least, I think they bet on us winning….

You might guess I hated P.E. But not as much as I loathed the two Stormtroopers who ran those classes. Every day we’d strip down and put on our little shorts and t-shirts, snug up our jockstrap and head out to some variant of humiliation. One fine spring day we headed out to the baseball field for some intramural competition. Coach Mengele took his place at third base to play with us. Bored, I guess. Coach Mengele was about 6’7” and 250 pounds of raw Aryan meat. He had blonde hair and metallic eyes. If Arnold Schwarznegger had been a star back then, this guy would’ve been his double in Terminator.

I had played some baseball back in Georgia. My old man was a semi-pro pitcher, once got to pitch against Ted Williams. He would take us boys out in the back yard and show us how to hold a bat, field a ball, pitch a curve. We weren’t very good, but he always told us it was more important to get an education than be a star athlete. We wanted to believe that, but how many honor roll kids get to be Prom King? Maybe he just wanted us to be single all our lives, I don’t know. But like I said, I’d played baseball before and when I got on base the first day, I watched the Fuhrer over there on 3rd base waiting like a giant spider for the unlikely possibility I would try to get past him. The kid at the plate slugged one into the corner of the outfield and so I went tearing around 2nd and headed for 3rd. The outfielder had put the ball perfectly in line for a tag-out where Arnold was blocking the basepath, a huge troll who wasn’t asking for a toll, he was going to bounce me back to 2nd or swat me to right field with the baseball in his glove.

I heard the ball hit the leather right after I drove at him in a slide, feet up, all 140 pounds of unmuscled boyhood, and I aimed at his ankle with everything I had. And surprise of surprises, the Jolly Green Giant toppled onto his face as if Jack had lopped off his beanstalk. I slid into 3rd safe and popped right up. And stood looking down at my tormentor. He scrambled around, wiped dirt off the side of his face, and for a moment I thought he would come up swinging. “You okay?” I asked Goliath sweetly.

There are moments you will cherish the rest of your days. There are moments that you will look back on and think that right there was a turning point of some kind, even if you don’t have the vocabulary for it. The stunned look on that man’s face when he recovered himself, well, it was worth the humiliations of countless gym classes. If small victories don’t mean anything to you, okay, I understand. But I can tell you, it changed the way that man thought of me from then until I left that backwash highschool. It didn’t change a thing, though, how I thought of him.

Some people are born to be businessmen. They know how to promote themselves, they understand negotiation, they embody what Donald Trump calls the Art of the Deal. I wish I had a couple of strands of those genes in my DNA. My kin, my ancestors, my genepool — all I can say is they climbed down out of the trees, but they never figured out they could sell the timber or develop the real estate. Plus we never remembered how to climb back up so now folks want to sell US the damn trees.

I actually have a business. I know, hard to believe. My right-leaning Republican relatives and in-laws shake their heads sadly to think I’m the only one in the two families who represents their bedrock GOP values of entrepreneurial get-up-and-go, job creation, small business struggles, all those virtues they hold dear. I sell goods. I buy materials, fashion them into art and then I have to sell the product. American? Well, it sticks in their throats, but yeah, as apple pie. Mom and country. Bootstrap success story. You might suppose, after 35 years, I’d be pretty good at it. I just made a stained glass entryway window for some new arrivals on the South End. Even though I’m cheaper than any glass shop in the Pacific Northwest … and even though my stuff is original artwork … I ended up giving them a discount. And they’re rich. You tell me what’s wrong with that picture.

I bought a new truck a few years ago when my old one almost caused me to miss a huge commission for a public art project down in Portland. You think I negotiated a lower price or argued for some ‘extras’? If you thought that, you don’t know me. All I asked my salesman was sell me the damn truck sitting out there in the lot, the one without any bells or whistles, and don’t screw around, I want to leave here ASAP, I don’t want to play the game, I don’t want the sales manager showing me an invoice proving you aren’t making any money on the deal, I don’t want to hear that bullshit. Yes, I’ll pay full price. No, I don’t want to take it for a test drive. Yes, I’m a complete idiot.

But …. I’m an idiot who would rather pay the full monte than get down in the pit and wrassle for a few dollars. I’m not going to lie and say money is beneath me. I’m frugal to a fault. I’m my Depression-era parents’ kid. I shop mostly at Goodwills, I buy Chinese, I’m so stingey I squeak. Money comes hard and it leaves hard too.

Sales is a tough job, at least for the likes of me. Buyer beware? I don’t think so. For me, it’s seller beware.

In 1973 I worked at a dog pound in Madison, Wisconsin. What we called a Humane Society. We adopted 40 % of our mutts … meaning, we killed 60% of the animals, the correct euphemism being euthanized. The national average was 25% adopted so we patted ourselves on the back. My minimum wage job was to clean puppy cages and help kill critters. Let’s just say it’s a short career track unless you’re a practicing sadist, which I am not.

In fact, I adopted three dogs myself, maybe not a big deal if I lived on a country estate with acreage for the hounds to chase rabbits and deer for days on end, but I lived in a second story one bedroom apartment over a TV repair shop. Hard to believe now, looking back. No, not three dogs in a small apartment. That there used to be TV repair shops. When’s the last time you remember fixing a television rather than buy a new one?

One day at the pound they needed me to man the front desk, something I’d never done previously, something that might just lead me up a rung on the promotional ladder. I asked what was expected of me up here at the front door and was told I would direct folks to the kennels where they could inspect their future pets. Beats shoveling shit, I thought.

My first encounter with the public was a woman bringing in her old dog and its 4 new puppies. “I can’t take care of these,” she said, pointing at the little wiggling pups in a cardboard box. I asked if maybe she might’ve considered spaying as an option. She shook her head. “Costs money,” she answered. “So you want to leave the mother too? Hasn’t she been with you awhile?” I asked. “Yeah, I’m tired of her too.” Oddly, this pissed me off.

I picked up the phone to our intercom. “Larry,” I said, “fire up the incinerator. We got five to torch.” My dog whisperer seemed suddenly alarmed. Shocked even. “You gonna just kill em?” she cried.

“Whadja think?” I said cruelly. “You think people are lined up for an old dog and her litter?”
About this time Larry emerged from the back, looked at the box of pups and asked, “These?” I nodded. Larry looked at the woman with measured contempt, picked up the box and went into the back where I knew he’d unload them into the puppy cages. He’d be back for the mother shortly. I started filling out the paperwork the way a guard at Dachau would, dispassionately. Name. Address. Reason for wanting your pet killed. Basic stuff.

I guess the woman called later to see if her dogs were toast because Mike, my supervisor, called me into his office. He explained — patiently — how our job was not to judge, our job was to take in unwanted animals so they weren’t drowned in pillowcases in the lake or shot behind the barn. “We want them to bring them to us,” he sighed, painfully aware I was unfit for further front desk duty.

I lasted a few more weeks. Larry lasted a month. There are, I’ve learned, some jobs that aren’t a good ‘fit’. My trouble, of course, was that was pretty much true of all jobs.

Down at the Little Church in the Ravine the congregation is gearing up for the End Times. Pastor Paul comes from the Cotton Mather School of Preaching, meaning, he intends to scare the holy bejabbers out of his flock, wake them up before it’s too late and lead them into the nettle-less valley of righteousness. He’s offering Salvation, take it or leave it. Woe unto those who don’t take it ….

Jimmy the Geek’s mizzus listens to these sermons Sunday after Sunday. She recently volunteered to minister to the Little Lambs of Jesus, the youth group that meets an hour before the late service, and Jimmy, an electronics engineer down at the Boeing plant, is at a complete loss what to do about her evangelical fervor. “She wasn’t like this when we got married,” he told our decidedly profane group of sinners gathered at the booths beside the pool table in the Pilot Lounge. “I’m not real religious, ya know, but I agreed to go to church with her. It’s almost a cult what they got down there in the ravine. I didn’t know we’d be drinking Kool-Aid instead of grapejuice.”

“Armageddon, man,” Two Toke pronounced over a tough 8 ball side pocket. Which he missed by a country mile …. Chalking his cue thoughtfully, he commiserated with Jimmy. “Scary stuff, Revelations. Mark of the Beast. Four ponies of the Apocalypse. I been listening to midnight radio lately. Obama’s the anti-Christ and the Middle East is heating up. The Russians are coming in. Anytime now, they say.”

“Pastor Paul predicts Iran will get the bomb in a year and that’s the End Jenny believes this stuff,” Jimmy blurted. He waved his empty pint glass at Vic, tonight’s fill-in bartender. Jimmy wasn’t going home soon, it was obvious to all of us and by god we were going to stick with our pal til the glasses were broken or the bar closed. South End Sinner’s Code. “What am I gonna do? I already said I won’t go anymore and now she’s teaching Sunday School too?”

Robbie stopped mid-shot, pointed with his cue and said solemnly, “Call her bluff, buddy.” Jimmy shook his head. Robbie continued. “Obama’s got one more year. Give her a year for the End Times to happen. When it doesn’t, time to reassess. Check and mate, dude!”

Jimmy took Vic’s refill the way a pilgrim clutches sacrament. Robbie slammed the 6 ball into the corner pocket with a bang, left himself an easy 2 ball on the side. “That’s what I would do,” he declared.

Two Toke could see his own End Times if Robbie hit the 2 ball. “Easy for a man with no wife, Rob,” he smiled, maybe put a little Doubt on the table. “Faith’s a funny thing. Hard as hell to argue it …”

“Damn, Tom, you want Jimbo to start stockin food and guns?” Robbie eased the 3 into the side with a soft sweet stroke. The 8 ball waited, hard cut, but Robbie was hot, all the confidence in the world. Two Toke groaned, leaned on his useless cue. “No,” he muttered, “ I just want him to save a marriage.” Jimmy nodded mournfully. Robbie cut the 8 ball and we all watched it roll half a mile down a long green to the far corner pocket, hang for a breathless second, then drop with a dull clatter.

“End Time, Tom” the shooter laughed and Two Toke slapped a new set of quarters on the felt. If any of us thought we’d solve Jimmy’s problems tonight, it would take more beers than Vic would serve.

Shortly after my hot water heater went kaput, the bathroom faucet decided to defect too. The gods of plumbing, ever capricious, always cruel, know when to hit a man when he’s down. I’d just gotten a call from our new library. The big window where my glass mural was installed was leaking. What could I do about it? And if I couldn’t do anything about it, I was to know that the long term maintenance of the library was paramount and if necessary, they would (reluctantly) trashcan the art glass. I said I wasn’t a window system installer and didn’t have a clue if flashing or caulking would help. I also said if the library itself was in jeapordy of being washed downstream, by all means, sacrifice the stained glass and save yourselves. Geez, I got my own leakage to deal with….

The faucet was the second one I’d put in that downstairs bathroom, a fancy Swiss number I thought would outlast me. Something internal was leaking and I decided to replace the whole thing rather than start searching for valve stems and such in Geneva. I got myself a Kohler. I’ve toured the famous Kohler factory with its wall of toilets 20 feet high and 30 feet wide, an impressive lineup of crappers made proudly in Wisconsin. Kohler, Wisconsin, actually. Like the Swiss faucet I thought this solid piece of plumbed engineering would outlast me. Which, if past plumbing escapades are any clue, it might, if for no other reason than the stress and aggravation would probably kill me one day.

If you are a careful reader of this blogsite, you know the Rules of Plumbing set forth by Skeeter. Any job, no matter how small, easy or insignificant, will require a minimum of 3 trips to the hardware store. It’s like E=mc squared. You can’t get around it. You may not understand the mathematic formula that proves it, but ignorance isn’t going to help you. Sorry. I know, I’ve tried. Those who cling to the notion that ignorance is bliss, they haven’t done their own plumbing.

I’m going to spare you the minutiae of 3 days in the hellhole of my downstairs bathroom. I’m going to skip the part where I ended up pulling the entire sink out, marble base and all. I’m going to simply tell you I made 4 trips, not 3, to the nearest hardware store for new supply lines, cut-off valves and various other parts that wouldn’t fit with the new fancy Kohler. I’m going to jump straight to the day, a few days down the pike, when I reinstalled the sink with the gleaming Kohler faucet glinting a golden light from its elegant and stylish neck, turned the tap and … a measley flow of water flowed from its mouth.

Lesser men might have given up. Lesser men might have called a plumber. Lesser men might have taken a maul to the whole wretched sink and vented their misery and frustration in an orgasm of rage. But I am not that man. I have, of course, been that man. And I know that when the dust clears and the smoke smolders, the release of that brutal outrage will be nothing compared to what comes next. It is a short lived pyrrhic victory no matter how good it felt for those few moments of manic catharsis.

No, I went to the internet, I googled up the problem and I deciphered that it was the aerator, a little screw on gizmo faucet manufacturers are fond of attaching to the spout. Don’t ask me why. Just let me unscrew it and leave it off so little bits of sand don’t clog it ever again….

I could make you cry telling you the next series of events. I could make you believe there is no God, at least none who could stand up to the drain-faced horror that is the God of Plumbing. I could make you pity me more than a Syrian refugee stuck in limbo waiting for winter to descend on the swamps of Slovenia. But to what end? Suffice it to say the aerator wouldn’t come out. No, the good engineers at Kohler had attached it to a small cheap plastic quarter inch tube that I eventually snipped off after jerking and pulling on it for an hour. A grain of sand would have stopped half its flow. Picture it: inside this polished nickel faucet, they had used a plastic piece of tubing. Ten cents of tubing, no more. On an expensive faucet bearing the name Kohler.

Oh, you bet snipping that cheapass piece of junk off ruined the entire faucet. You know I had to start over, you know I had to buy another faucet by any other manufacturer than &#@?!! Kohler, and you know by now, or you by god should, how many more trips I will have to make to the parts store before that new Pfister goes in the sink. Today is Thanksgiving. Count your blessings! Me, I’m counting those trips.

I was in the South End Trader Jimbo’s the other day looking for those hard-to-get-down-here items in their Land O’Yuppie aisles. Somehow I got waylaid by the organic pine nuts. Organic? Are we growing pine trees in nitrate infused woods now? Further down the aisle I found gluten free kettle corn trumpeting stuff that never had gluten in the first place. Not only that, they were guaranteed nut-free. The products, not Trader Jimbo. When I turned the corner, drove past the chutneys and the soft cheeses, I discovered Aisle 6, the no preservative, no additive, no GMO, no growth hormone, no antibiotic, no gluten, no soy, no MSG, no transfat, no caged animal row. About middle of the aisle there were three cans in a pyramid. Cave water. 12 ounces for $10.95. I took all three. Just so the row would be immaculate for a moment.

A friend of mine has a futon mattress that contains organic cotton. Softer maybe, like his head. Course I grew up with virgin wool — as if I care what the sheep do at night. These are dangerous times. Who knows what’s in those nettles I’ve been brewing beer with? They don’t come with an organic certification and what with acid rain precipitating out from Chinese pollution, I may be toxifying myself inadvertendly. My entire garden may well be a seeping cesspool of multi-syllabic compounds from the prevailing winds of Seattle and Gomorrah or contaminated from the tailings and runoffs of the South End industrial era. Natural? That’s no longer a designation to give anyone peace of mind. No government certification for natural, pal.

They tell me our water has elevated levels of natural arsenic. The neighbors on water systems filtrate for that and other minerals. We’re on our own well. Which means just that, we’re on our own. Forget worrying about contaminated nettles in my homebrew. The water’s got poison in it.

So where do you go to find the purity we so desperately seek? Where do you retreat to escape the toxic leaching of modern society? And where can a yahoo go to avoid the steady drip drip drip of new warnings, new labels, new GMO salmon species, new BMO milk products, new irradiated foods, new afflictions? The South End??? Sorry, we got the bio-hazard tape across the road now. No wonder people are signing up for the Mars mission. Even if it is one way only.

When I got my refugee status on the South End, I bought an old 1910 shack with a wellhouse behind it and one other building, a big shed out in the field built from alder poles buried directly in the ground. 38 years later we still have the shack, but the wellhouse got rebuilt and the shed, no surprise, is gone. Over those four decades the shed with its 20 foot wide GOLDEN CARGO fruit crate label painted on the side by Joe, my old roommate, served as art object, a goat shed, a repair garage, a boatbuilding barn, a junkyard, a truck garage and a storage unit. It got remodeled time and time again until finally the cedar shake roof with the 4 inch carpet of mosses and bonsai trees began to leak.

A few years back I decided it was time to tear it down. Sad, I know, but I figured to salvage some barnwood milled from cedars off the place before rot or a windstorm beat me to it. One big alder pole held the center of the roof. I figured if I could pull that down the rest would drop like a house of cards so after I’d salvaged what I could, I pulled up with my trusty little pickup, wrapped a chain around that alder pole and to my bumper hitch. I was maybe 20 feet outside the shed, plenty far enough for safety I figured, so I snugged up taut then popped the clutch.

The centerpole snapped away easy enough as I watched from my rearview mirror. Good, I thought, expecting to see the shed drop straight down. Instead I saw the dark shadow of the building coming right at the truck. Holy criminey, I thought, it’s going to collapse on the truck and me, one final act of revenge for the shed.

It didn’t quite reach my Toyota and me. But it scared me pretty good. I hopped out, revved up the chainsaw and went to work, adrenaline running fast. An hour later and too many nails in the chain to count, I gave up. If I thought a dryrotted old structure would come apart easily, I learned the hard way it wouldn’t. I tried pulling some of the mossy old shakes off and they were holding fast. For a crummy old building, it was reluctant to accept demolition. So I did what any dyed-in-the-wool South Ender would do. No, I didn’t leave it there to rot away the rest of my lifetime, I put the saw away, grabbed some matches and kerosene and set the whole miserable she-bang on fire. It took about an hour. Incredible flames shot out once the roof caught, an inferno twenty feet high. No one noticed. No 911 calls were placed by alarmed motorists or nosey neighbors. And another iconic edifice disappeared into the lost history of Camano Island.

Today, class, we need to address the dangers of creosote buildup in your chimney. One way to prevent this dangerous condition is to leave the stove door ajar when you first build your fire in the morning, get up a good flame and burn out the creosote in the stack you created by damping down. You can hear it tinkling down as the flames eat up what collected on the pipes. The trick, of course, is not to catch it on fire, sending flames up into the chimney at ferocious temperatures. Otherwise you risk a chimney fire.

As kids, me and my brother caught an old stone fireplace chimney on fire burning Christmas wrappings. My father was a U.S. Forest Service ranger and we were encamped in an historic ranger station at what is now the ‘Birthplace of the Forest Service’ near Asheville, North Carolina in the Pisgah National Forest. I was maybe 5 years old and my brother was 3. I still remember the old man outside watching flames erupt from the top of the chimney sending sparks onto the roof which he worried,rightly, might catch fire. It didn’t, the house survived and we were given our first lessons in woodburning safety.

Forty or more years later I would recall my father’s angry admonitions. A little belatedly. We caught the chimney of the shack on fire one snowy day by leaving the door open too long. We heard it before we saw it, an infernal rushing of gas and flame from the stove up the stack and into the chimney. I closed the door and shut down the damper to keep it from feeding on oxygen, but it was too late, the stack was on fire and that obsidian-like creosote was now burning. I climbed the roof in the snow, slipping a few times and sledding down to the lower roof over the bathroom, but I finally made the summit, no little feat, where I could look down the guts of the chimney. It looked like the hellish mouth of some masonry dragon, red and glowing. I considered dumping snow down its gullet but I worried that would crack the brickwork. Maybe, I thought optimistically, it would clean that creosote out once and for all. Just keep an eye on it, make sure nothing came through any cracks in the masonry to catch a floor on fire, might just be a good thing after all.

The mizzus, of course, wanted to call the VFD. Naturally I pooh-poohed that. Calling the Volunteer Fire Department is like asking for directions when you’re lost. The worst was over, the sparks weren’t sailing out the chimney any more. Things were under control. An hour later I put my hand on the chimney in the upstairs bedroom. It was hot. Half an hour later it was hotter. I got buckets ready, just in case. Half an hour more and I couldn’t touch the bricks and the floor was smoking. I tossed some water on it and steam hissed up immediately. Now I was worried. For the next two hours I spritzed the floor and the ceiling to keep them from catching fire. The heat from the glowing creosote was incredible passing through the bricks. All that energy stored up from thousands of fires, just waiting for its chance.

I got to tell you it was a long night. But … we didn’t lose the shack. Course we could never trust the mortar in that chimney after that. Any crack between the floors might let a flame through we’d never see until too late. So shortly after, I deconstructed the chimney brick by brick. But those were clean bricks, I can testify to that. Not a speck of creosote on those beauties. The stovepipe we replaced the chimney with, well, it never compared with that old chimney. I am glad, I have to say, I learned my lesson on the sauna about clearances to the roof. Otherwise I would’ve probably burned the house down learning it. Education comes with a pricetag.

The old shack came equipped with an ancient brick chimney whose mortar had loosened and whose interior was glassy with obsidian creosote. Every year I cleaned the stack with a homemade chimney brush, being too cheap to spring for the commercial one made of steel bristles and attached to a steel rod you could add connector lengths to for reaching the twenty feet I needed to clean. My old roommate Joe and I had made the first one out of a block of wood wrapped in chicken wire we punched down from the top with a long pole. The block was going to be pulled back up with a rope attached to an eyebolt we had ingeniously screwed to the block. Sure, we probably would be applying for a patent, sell em on late night TV by the thousands. Buy now, we’ll send you a second one same price, just add a small charge for shipping and handling, our operators are standing by.

So I stood at the peak of the roof and pushed that block, that soon-to-be-patented-and-marketed Chimney Plow (insert trademark) down the gut of that ancient brick chimney. Trouble was, the chimney was built about 1910 by hand and so it didn’t exactly go rectilinearly, it sort of curved and the block, being designed for modern masonry, didn’t. We got ourselves a long 2×4 and rammed that puppy down through fifty year old creosote, scraping away years of potentially flammable crud. Until it jammed…. This is where the rope and eyebolt would come in handy. You know, IF the eyebolt hadn’t pulled out of the block of wood. Now we had the chimney completely blocked and our sole means of heat was rendered useless. The Three Stooges couldn’t have done any better than us two idiots.

We tried bashing on the block, we took off the stovepipe and could just reach it from below, we screwed an eyebolt from below and tied a rope to it, we bashed while we pulled, we swore while we cried, we cut away chicken wire and we whittled on the block. Hours later we got it to slip free. The shack was dead cold, we were half dead and the chimney was scraped free of creosote. Well, not the glassy decades-old hard stuff in the cracks and crevices of the mortar. We decided not to worry about that as night fell over us. Some years later we would regret that decision, but as we always said when times got tough, tomorrow is soon enough.