Seems like as far back as my earliest memories I can see flickering flames dancing in a fireplace. I don’t recall much about the log house in which we first lived, but I remember the fireplace. Maybe it was the warmth of the fire, or the mesmerizing rhythm of the rolling flames. Whatever the reason, I can’t help but smile when I go back down the halls of my memories and find myself in front of a fire.
Of course, our ancestors sat in front of a fire for thousands of years. Some would say it is in our DNA to be intrigued by fire.
I can only tell you this: Each fall when leaves begin to turn, and I hear the haunting call of geese in flight or feel the bite of frosty air on my face, I get a little homesick. And I begin to look for smoke circling out of a chimney, and I have a longing to breath in the smell of smoke from a hardwood fire.
There is something special about “wood” heat. When you come in out of the cold, the smell of the fire and the feel of the warm air has a quality about it that says, “welcome home.”
My maternal grandfather’s house in the Brim Hollow featured a big, open fireplace. It would accommodate a back log 9 to 12 inches “through” (diameter). At night, just before going to bed, my grandfather would “bank up” the ashes against the back log; which, in effect, put the fire out for the night. The next morning, he would rake the ashes back from the back log exposing the embers that had smoldered during the night. A piece or two of kindling, and more firewood would bring the fire back to life in a sudden burst of flames. You might say my grandfather was the self-appointed “thermostat.”
An Ashley wood heater was the centerpiece in the living room in the house where I grew up. My mother was the keeper of the flame. My father (sometimes reluctantly) kept the front porch stocked with firewood, but my mother “tended” the fire. And she had her preferences when it came to the kind of wood he supplied. To my father, “a tree was a tree.”
My late mother use to say, “hackberry burns about the same whether green or dry.” She preferred Ash.
To his credit, my father consistently provided an excellent supply of cedar kindling each year. In the spring, he would secure a pickup truck load of cedar slabs (trimmings) from the J. C. Owen sawmill. (That was years before the Owens made the transition from producing cedar boards to making cedar bedding.)
My father would pile the cedar slabs in an out-of-the-way location and let them “dry out” all summer. At the first hint of winter, he would attach a frame to the front of our John Deere tractor. The frame featured a small, round sawmill blade driven by a 6 inch-wide, black belt which was “hooked up” to the tractor. There’s no sound like the whine of a sawmill blade crawling through dry cedar. My brothers and I would “feed” the slabs onto the frame, and my father carefully guided the wood into the whirling saw blade. The sound of the saw, and the smell of cedar, and the yielding of tired, young muscles; and being a part of a job needing to be done made for an experience to be re-visited and treasured over a lifetime.
There’s nothing quite like cedar kindling for firing up a fire. My father made sure we had an abundant supply.
Today, I live in a climate-controlled dwelling. There is a thermostat on the wall. At the touch of a button, I choose the temperature I desire. The air in my house is a bit too sterile for me.
But that doesn’t keep me from going back to feeling the warmth of a fire on my face and the smell of smoke and dried cedar. It not only warms my heart, it strengthens the marrow in my bones.
Copyright 2022 by Jack McCall
