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The kid who sat next to me in third grade whispered one
morning. Do you know what the dirtiest word of all
is?
I shook my innocent head. I just found out last
night,
he explained. I'll tell you at
recess.
He was wrong. Years later I learned that the most
disgusting, offensive phrase in English goes like this:
The part you need is on back-order.
I heard it again last week after the house began to chill Tuesday afternoon. The furnace hadn't gone on for a while, so we figured the pilot light was out.
Martha bravely ventured into the cellar and announced
that she couldn't find a pilot. I couldn't either. Our
Whirlpool furnace is a marvel of high-tech efficiency with
electronic ignition. We called a pro, who explained that
our updraft blower motor
was as dead as Two
Forks.
No such motors lurked in Salida, and the distributor in Denver didn't have one either. But there was a Whirlpool warehouse in Memphis, home of Federal Express. The motor could come overnight, right?
Then we heard the b
phrase. At least a week might
pass before Whirlpool finds a motor. Whirlpool will not
ship the motor directly to Salida. Corporate policy
requires them to get it to Memphis first, probably by
oxcart, then ship it to the Denver distributor, and then to
Salida. I mention this just in case you were thinking of
buying a Whirlpool furnace, and you were wondering just how
long your house might be cold if a part wears out.
Our house hasn't gotten cold, since it also came equipped with a Colonial Universal Model F-75 wood-burning cookstove in the kitchen, and a squat black cast-iron Resolute in the living room. Out by the woodpile, I went to work with my splitting maul.
Wood heat is filthy. It doesn't pay, even with free wood, all cut to stove length. Splitting it, bringing it indoors, and feeding and cleaning the stoves takes at least 90 minutes a day. Even at minimum wage, that's $5 a day, or $150 a month. You can buy a lot of clean and convenient natural gas for $150.
Wood heat brought other expensive complications: a $40 stove board to protect the kitchen linoleum from errant sparks, a $50 wood box, an ash rake for cleaning the kitchen range. Ash rakes used to be 89 cents at any hardware store. Now they're $5 from antique dealers.
But there's another side. Your feet never get as warm as they do next to a parlor stove. In the kitchen, even if the gas range still works, why use it when the wood-burner is running? Tortillas warm instantly and chili simmers all day. Even in decadent 1989, we're a wholesome Norman Rockwell family every night when we gather at the kitchen table, the warmest spot in the house, to do homework or read. Newsweek wouldn't have to publish doleful special editions about the fragmented American family if we eliminated central heat in this country.
Such simple pleasures are now illegal along the Front Range because wood smoke allegedly pollutes. But I recall a frigid night last winter at a friend's cabin in St. Elmo, where everyone heats with wood and the chimneys spewed furiously. As we skied down the street, the stars glittered with a brightness that would shame a fireworks show. The air had to be quite clean.
Nobody drives cars in St. Elmo during the winter. At the turn of the century, before there were cars, when heat came solely from wood and coal, Denver was a world-renowned health resort for people with respiratory problems.
But there are a lot more car lots than wood lots in
Denver, which may explain how laws get written. And if
they'd just pass a law which requires parts to be available
in a reasonable time, so that I'd never hear
back-order
the rest of my life, I'd gladly give up
on wood. I much prefer writing to wood-chopping, and even
bookkeeping is more fun than cleaning stoves. I love
central heat. When it works.
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