jharkin said:
Similarly when it comes to music I still listen to records.
Unexpected penalty for
not burning wood....
I've mentioned on a few occasions my old wood burning furnace, which we affectionately named "Maurice" (from the movie, "Little Monsters"). I threw over 50 cord of hardwood at that thing in five seasons. The alternative was electric baseboard heat... something we never once even considered turning on. And we never once needed it, because Big Mo' would heat us right out of the house, open windows in the middle of January and everything. But it was the last day of November, and it had been a mild one. I only fired up Mo' a few times, and I thought I was done with it as we prepared to move to the new place.
On the last day there, we got hit with an unbelievable cold snap. We could see our breath in the house, and my wife begged me to start a fire. Unfortunately, I had already moved our firewood supply to the new place the day before. Then I thought, "Hell, it's the last day here... let's see how that electric works." And it worked fine. I could sense the meter just spinning away, but it did the trick for the few hours we needed to pack up the last of the non-essentials. Books, stereo, musical instruments, sporting goods, etc. The last thing left to pack was my vinyl collection. I got several orange crates, grabbed a cup of coffee, and proceeded to sit down to pack up my records. They felt a bit warm as I was pulling them out of the shelving unit, and then I felt the back edges of them. Not warm, but blazingly
hot!
For five years these precious vinyl discs had been stored directly in front of the main electric baseboard in the living room. It was a decision I had made when I was 100% sure we would never once turn that damn electric heat on. A decision I had just plumb forgotten about.
I went into panic mode, and then I thought of a solution. I called my wife, and we quickly grabbed them out while they were still hot and alternated them hot edge to warm edge in stacks on the floor and put every box of books we had on top of the stacks. Then I stepped back to pray.
At the end of the day, we went back to the old house to get the cats and the vinyl. Real bad omen, because one of our cats - the kids favorite - lay dead in the road in front of the house. So we had a group cry, and then a group hug, and quickly got the rest of our belongings and headed five miles down the road to our new home.
Good omen. As were approaching, I saw that the sky was starting to glow. The sun had just gone down, so I was a bit concerned about the possibility of a fire until I realized what it was - the beginning of the most spectacular display of Aurora Borealis that I have ever seen. It lit the whole sky up. Shimmering sheets of red and green ghosts dancing across the horizon, cascades of white light erupting from nowhere and slowly fading away. My wife was stunned because she had never seen them in her entire life. I ran into the house and grabbed every blanket, sleeping bag and comforter I could find and threw them out on the front lawn. Then I grabbed the wife and three kids and pulled them down into the gigantic nest and watched for almost two hours in the 7ºF air.
So we finally made our way into the house, fed the kids, and put them to sleep. Lady BK put dishes away and organized while I grabbed a big glass of whiskey and set up the stereo. Then, with some degree of trepidation, I began to examine the records. First one out of the box was Wes Montgomery's "Smokin' At The Half Note". As I pulled it out of the liner, it seemed perfectly fine. Then I noticed it had a distinct little cup to it. And then I saw that the back edge, the one that was resting against the electric heater, had a severe wrinkle in it. Junk. My pulse began to race as I pulled out the next one. Whew... OK.. wait... OH NO! Another one. And another... and another.. and so on to the very end.
Almost 300 rare vinyl albums, the result of nearly ten years of collecting in relative poverty, all destroyed. The legacy of my entire education in blues and jazz, turned into hundreds of ash trays.
Grown men don't weep over such things, but the grief was unbearable. Not as bad as losing a family member, but on the order of maybe losing your business (I had just experienced that the year before) or something like that. Blue Note, Vanguard, Impulse, Chess, Atlantic, Columbia. Some of it so rare I've never been able to even find references to it... all gone forever. I handled it the best way I could, by downing the rest of my scotch, crawling up to the new bedroom and pulling the covers over my head until I fell asleep.
So the moral of the story is: "Always burn wood." Even when you are fed up with it, and are feeling a bit extravagant. You just never know when the fickle finger of Fire Karma might tap you on the shoulder.
