by Douglas DeBono, 2006

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT StandingOrders.BlogSpot.Com, July 12, 2006

My mother has a wood stove in the barn. It looks like a relic from the century before last, and she uses it to burn the mail. Anyway the last person to do any work on the stove died five or six years ago. Some people measure things according to the calendar, my mother cites events as to when so-and-so went toes up.

I checked the stove a couple of weeks ago, noting the holes in the stove pipe. My granddaughter could probably punch her fist clean through the bottom pipe, and she is only ten months old. I explained to my mother that we needed to get a new pipe as I cast a worried eye over the rest of the contraption.

The stove pipe comes in three pieces and she figured she only needed to buy one. Further more she complained that some "darn fool" (my mother's moniker for anyone that dares disagree) changed the regulation and made the stove pipe double walled. Seemed like a reasonable idea to me.

Did I mention that stove is in a barn, and rather than go through the ordeal of opening the barn doors for ventilation we decided to sweat (you see little things like that are harder to handle than congressional edicts). While we were at it the top of the stove kind of fell apart. My son suggested that maybe she should get a new stove, but she proclaimed that so-and-so put it in and he died 3 years ago (the stove is way older than 3 years and it has been there as long as I can remember). Besides what fire inspector would authorize the permit for a new stove? It is a barn filled with hay bales, wood chips and fire wood.

We eventually got the pipe installed and the stove back together. (It is amazing what you can do with stainless steel half inch bolts.) I left her with the admonition to only make little fires in her stove. "Why should I do that?" she demanded. Because big fires might bring the whole place down.