While pondering the mysteries of life, I missed the 17 days of winter we get in my part of the country. Therefore while not a seasonal post, it is a timely one. Human foibles always are. For example:
• Why don't men who dye their hair ask another man how it looks...in natural light?
• St. Patrick's Day aside, green bagels are unnatural. Then there is the probable fact that St. Patrick didn't eat bagels, green or otherwise. Green bagels are embarrassing. I avert my eyes.
• What’s with the elephantine testicles hanging over the trailer hitches of vehicles driven by males who can't hitch up their britches unaided let alone a trailer? When I'm behind those foul things in a drive-thru, I want to get out of my car, knock politely on the guy’s window, and throw up in his lap.
Consider the fireplace snob. Snobbery in any form is offensive but I find it oddly compelling like going to the snake house at the zoo when it's feeding time for the boa constrictor. You know you'll watch. You'll get sweaty, fight back the gag reflex, but watch you will.
Snobbery has the same effect on me. It's offensive but I have to watch and speculate. Snobs are much more fun than lunching boas.
There is a caste system within the fireplace community consisting predominately of males. I've never met a female purist, although I'm sure they exist.
The Brahmins have fireplaces large enough to roast a spitted boar. They burn logs that were utility poles in another life. Fireplace tools are required poke and prod the burning logs. They are also handy for chasing down and dispatching the occasional flaming squirrel that failed to escape the annual Christmas Day chimney fire and is running madly through the living room igniting the wrapping paper.
One step down from the fireplace heffies are your firewood purists. These folks have a cord or two of selected wood cut to specifications and probably washed. Then it's delivered and stacked artfully on an above-ground rack. These are not woodpiles in the traditional sense. They are wood arrangements. (The choppers laugh all the way back to their cedar stand before going home to their central heat.)
A substratum is the firewood enthusiast who resorts to lighting his fires with a gas ignition which precludes the embarrassing failure of a fire failing to ignite by traditional methods (matches) especially when guests are present. Personally, I think using gas ignition is for wussies. But hey, that's just me.
Next are the I-hate-these-things-but-my-wife-children-have-allergies guys who have sunk to using faux logs. These are the purists wannabes you see at night in a Home Depot (across town) scurrying with boxes of faux logs to their SUVs with the faux testicles.
Personally, these are my favorite, not the testicles, the faux logs. They burn for hours, contain no allergens, probably toxins, but they don't make your eyes itch. They are clean burning down to a fine ash which has the added benefit of dissuading the cat from the using the fireplace as a litter box.
Now the gas log guys weigh in. They spend thousands of dollars making a gas fire look real. The gas flames are real. The heat is real, but a guy can't poke them with fireplace tools. Well, he could but it would do a lot of damage to a very expensive set up. However the the hiss, crackle, and pop of wood logs is missing. Not to despair. They come with sound effects operated by a remote control. I'm not making this up.
Then there are my people. I bought my fireplace in a box from Big Lots for $250. It was marked down from $299 because it had a ding in its prefabricated surround.
It has an ill fitting plug-in fire unit. You can see daylight all around the fire box. It has little log-like objects and little coal-like objects that are endearing in their brave, little way.
An electronic chip that throws a flame-like image on the back of the firebox produces the flame. It does making a whirring noise not normally associated with a wood burning fireplace...but hey, the sucker cost $250, and I had to assemble it.
This is where my fun begins. My fireplace has the same soothing, comforting effect of a real fire. Longing for the winter days I missed, I turned it on but quickly shut it off because the room got hot.
But here’s the best part: After I set it up, my four- and two-year old grandchildren were over. They saw my new fireplace. My grandson noted that it wasn't real and that he had a real one at his house. (He also has a fireplace snob there as well.)
I said; "Well, look at this." and turned it on.
He looked at the fireplace, turned to his baby sister and with awe and wonder said: "Look. Grammy has a fireplace movie!"
Yes indeed I do have a fireplace movie that we believe gives off heat.
No fuss. No muss. No flaming squirrels. Life is good.
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