the Slammer, or, How I Spent Martin Luther King Day

I've had a crappy cold and spent all day Saturday and Sunday on the couch watching TV. It was the football playoffs, which was helpful, and the Bears won. It was my plan to spend my Monday, today, the MLK holiday, being more productive. So far so good. Lounged around reading and watching mom do exercises for a couple of hours. Got out of my pajamas for the first time since Friday and took mom to work. I then reluctantly surrendered to my office and worked for a couple of hours and Packed up the computer for the trip to Pagosa tomorrow. I headed home at 2 pm for a rendezvous with fate- I was about to encounter The Men Of Ashes Away. I believe you were all present on the evening at our house over the holiday- it may have actually happened on Christmas night- when we were burning logs in the upstairs fireplace and smoke started coming out of the downstairs fireplace. A first time occurance in the history of the house. This event led mom and I to face the inevitable need to have the chimney cleaned, for which we retained the services of Ashes Away, a local fireplace sales and maintenance company. Unlike government employees these men do not take Martin Luther King Day off. The scheduled appointment was today at 2:30, for which The Men Of Ashes Away showed up exactly on time. I can't remember their names, but they were earnest and personable fireplace professionals. The lead guy was about my age, the other guy probably in his early 40's. We went right to work. Both were truly intrigued by what had happened. Despite his years of experience working in an industry clearly requiring frequent contact with chimneys, the older guy had never seen one that served two fireplaces, like ours does. Up and down the stairs we strode, speaking man talk and solidifying in their minds the layout and what had happened that night weeks ago when smoke came out of the downstairs fireplace. The younger man explained the intricacies of the dual-fireplace chimney to the older man, which was followed by sopme brainstorming, and then, at last, action. You can picture the fireplaces- the downstairs is the same as when the house was built- the upstairs one is a metal stove insert into the original hearth. The older man kneeled down and stuck his head in the upstairs fireplace and looked upward with a match. His body language slumped slightly and he said in a soft but firm voice "shit-........ it's a slammer" This news was greeted instantly by a soft gasp from the younger man, next to whom I was standing. The older man stood back up. The entire encounter by this point had been going on about 15 minutes, and being Men we had accompanied our conversation with much direct eye contact. There was no eye contact for a few moments as The Men Of Ashes Away, not looking forward to giving me bad news, rubbed their lower faces and prepared themselves. Brimming with empathy, The Men resumed eye contact and explained to me what a slammer was, and over the course of another ten minutes, involving another trip down and up the stairs and much man talk back and forth, the case was solved. At great expense of course. A slammer is a metall fireplace which is "slammed" into a fireplace without there being an accompanying chimney liner attached. Our upstairs fireplace is a metal insert placed inside the original brick hearth. We can't see it from the outside but it has a hole in its top wall for smoke to vent out and up. A non-slammed, properly and more expensively installed stove would have a chimney liner- special metal pipe which attaches securely to the hole in the top of the stove and extends to the top outlet of the chimney. Then, instead of cleaning the whole chimney, only the liner needs periodic cleaning. Obviously when chimneys or their liners are scrubbed and cleared, much debris falls down them. Our chimney has no liner so not only can naturally occurring things like leaves ann enter from the outside, but the accumulated sticky disgusting pitch, soot and other flotsam and jetsam caused by previous chimneysweeps over the years (who unlike The Men Of Ashes Away failed to diagnose this particular design defect) has been falling on top of, behind and all around our stove ever since it was slammed in there, which was who knows how long before we moved in in 1990. None of this is visible, of course. It slowly became clear to us, through our thoughtful and to the point man-discussions, that there must be a huge accumulation of finieu (gross stuff) impacted all around the stove inside the hearth, that there must be constant contact (and great heat transfer) between the exterior of the slammed stove and the built-up crap. Not only that, but the dreaded waste has undoubtedly permeated into every possible crevasse within the chimney at or below the level of the stove, including the connection to the downstairs fireplace. Revelation followed hypothesis and we concluded that on the above discussed fateful evening over Christmas the smoke emanating from the downstairs fireplace was not the smoke from the logs burning in the upstairs fireplace, but from the toxic ooze which has built up within the slammed system which had finally combusted. The Men Of Ashes Away informed me gravely that there had undoubtedly been a huge heat buildup inside the chimney to have caused such a thing, which if left to its own progress would have caused an extremely intense and hard to put out house fire. They could not tell me how close we came to disaster, but there can be no more fires until our fireplace is replaced with a complying system. Probably $3-4,000, depending on if we go wood or gas. The Men Of Ashes Away would be glad to sell us and install the system of our choice. We parted friends, The Men and I. Handshakes with yet more full eye contact. Having observed the hands of these fireplace professionals throughout the course of our encounter, I knew they were pitch black, and I internally winced before the handshakes, but bonding had occurred and the ritual could not be foregone. Amazingly, no hand transfer took place. It was permanent, perhaps clean dirt on their hands. Hands which gladly received my $40 check. Who says MLK Day is boring? I seem to have blogged the remainder of the afternoon away. Big changes with school starting tomorrow- courage needed. Cograts on Baton Rouge Cody- on to Milwaukee! I love you all so much- stay strong dad