furnace octopus

0CTOPUSSES

.

A Short Story

By Izzy Sommers

George Wallace Carter, Ph.D.

40 Rockford Avenue,

Barnsville, IL 54321, USA

gwc@yahoo.com

June 5, 1990

Lillith Gravenhurst, LLD, MBA, BA, MU

33 Maple Street, Suite 44

Wellwood, IL 55566, USA

lillith@hotmail.com

Re: 40 South Rockford Ave.

Dearest Lillith,

As you know, I bought this old house, in 1987, at 40 South Rockford Avenue, just south of the beautiful Rockford Avenue Commuter Station, as a fixer-upper, planning to sell it for a profit, all the while living in it, “rent free” so to speak. It had not been lived in for over 3 years. The yellow, cedar slatted porched house on the corner of Cossitt and Rockford, still had magnificent, original woodwork and an octopus furnace which I immediately replaced with an efficient, much cheaper to operate gas furnace with a modernized duct system.

Just before I painted the house grey with black shutters, [the original colours, I discovered] and sold it for a profit of over $70,000 in May of 1990, I found a very dirty letter in the attic in the floor boards, covered with coal dust. I could have handed it over to the police but I thought it might have some legal or family repercussion so I’m passing the buck to you, as my lawyer and faithful friend. Thanks in advance for taking care of it. Here it is, reproduced for you:

Dear reader,

My entire life, furnaces have been my nemesis, my entire life. I never understood them completely and I seemed to screw up a lot with them. Of course, I knew that they generated heat and that heat was necessary for a house in the temperate zones. I lived in places where 4 seasons were the rule and, usually, winter meant snow and the turning on of the furnace. Some of my furnaces grumbled, others whistled and some hummed. Some of them whined and some of them sounded like the end of the earth was nigh.

From 1942 to 1953, we lived at #187 on Hess Street, North, in Collingwood, Ontario, Canada. This was the slummy part of town. A railroad spur ran up the street and helped to bring supplies and transport products, like tanks and bomb shells, to the folks than ran the war effort. In the winter, a horse pulled a wagon up to the front of the house and my mother negotiated with the driver for 12 bags of coal. It was my job to see that 12, no more, no less, were delivered to the basement window at the side of the house, where, the bags of coal could be emptied down a shute that led to the coal bin in our basement. My job or not, I loved to empty the heavy, sooty, bags and smell the distinctive odour of the coal as it rumbled down the shute. I took deep breaths in to savour the coal dust and experience it deeply.

Having returned the empty sacs to the driver, I would shut the window to the basement and come inside, and down the cellar steps to the basement with the fresh smell of coal dust. I could watch my father take shovels full of the coal from the bin and load the furnace. He used a newspaper to start the coal burning and then closed the heavy iron door with the ornate handle. I would have handled pieces of coal with my bare hands, now blackened, and thrown them into the smoldering coal fire before my father closed the door. As I aged, I would be able to shovel the coal myself and get the furnace going in the mornings, it having gone out during the night. Shoveling the white, powdery ashes out from under the huge grates to the dust bin was part of the joy of tending to the furnace.

The furnace itself was a monstrous affair with an octopus like grip on the ceiling of the basement. Of course, each of the octopuses arms was a circular duct that was attached to the house ducts that lead to the specific rooms of the house. Tiny, turnable valves could control the heat to specific rooms in specific patterns. Until I was 10, I couldn’t easily reach these valves. After I was 10 and over 5 feet tall I could easily turn the valves and adjust the flow of hot air to the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, the hall, and to each of the upstairs vents, the bedrooms, the hall and the bathroom.

Being hot-blooded myself, I had no desire to direct extra heat to the bedroom I shared with my brother. On the contrary, I saw to it that our bedroom remained cool throughout the winter. I didn’t share this inside knowledge with anyone until this very moment. So… forgive me my little brother. It was cold in our room at night because I liked it that way.

Incidentally, in the summertime, the horse carried ice-blocks to our house for our modern ice-box by Frigidaire. It had a simple compartment in its roof for two blocks of ice, measuring about 30 inches by 6 inches by 4 inches. In the wintertime, food was kept freezing cold by keeping it out on the porch. It was kept moderately cold by keeping it by any window. Butter, honey, salami, potatoes, tomatoes, bananas, onions, garlic, hard cheeses, peanut butter, and many other things, were not refrigerated.

Between 1967 and 1969, my wife and I and 2 boys, ages 1 and 5, and growing, stayed in an apartment in Berne, Switzerland, on Spruenglistrasse, in Eggholzli district. Our refrigerator was approximately 1 foot cubed. There was room for little else other than eggs and milk. Thus, butter, honey, salami, potatoes, tomatoes, bananas, onions, garlic, hard cheeses, peanut butter, and many other things, were not refrigerated. We shopped 3 times a day for our 3 meals, eating what we bought, obviating any controversial food handling. Only later in our stay was a supermarket opened like the ones to which we were accustomed in Chicago. We were continuously limited to quantity because of the size of our refrigerator. Somehow, in retrospect, this sounds like it should be one of Parkinson’s Laws.

In 1976, divorced, and alone, I bought a 1904 home at 40 Rockford Avenue in Barnsville Illinois. It had the original walnut woodwork, the original mahogany sliding doors separating the living room from the dining room and the formal living room. It had the original wood-carved window and door sills. It had 5 bedrooms, a full attic and a full basement. There was an old water pump in the basement. There was evidence that the original outhouse was in the back, somewhere and that the kitchen and upstairs’ and downstairs’ bathrooms and sunroom were built on as an afterthought, to the back of the original house. Unfortunately, someone had sacrificed the original fireplaces in the dining room downstairs and the master bedroom upstairs. The chimney structure was still there and functions as a chimney for the ancient coal furnace in the basement.

And, there it was! The original coal furnace with 12 ducts which, octopus-like. adhered to the ceiling of the basement. In the winter, it rumbled and grumbled and produced heat very reluctantly through its partially clogged passageways and filters which needed changing far more often than I realized. The smell of a coal fire and the smell of coal dust permeated the house. In the attic, under the floor boards, thick accumulations of coal desk forever drew my white cat. With one blind eye and one deaf ear since birth, White Lightening would become Black Bear. It would take weeks of self-cleaning to return to the original colour. I never realized how oily and sticky coal dust was.

Good-bye cruel world. Adieu octopuses. Adios omnipresent coal dust. Vamenose Amigos y Amigas y Muchachos.

Sincerely,

Henry Fountain.

And, it was signed and dated, September 8, 1984. The signature was flowery. The typing was flawless. The envelope, which I’m enclosing, just says, “TWIMC” which I presume means: to whom it may concern.

I found it touching and interesting. The people that sold me this house were agents and not family members, so I can’t add to the drama with a family story. I imagine there is one, other than the obvious that this was a lonely, divorced man with overwhelming stresses. It makes me think kindly of octopuses. Which reminds me, would you like to meet for lunch at the Parthenon tomorrow? It’s their octopus day special. Hope to see you soon.

Sincerely,

George W.

…your secret admirer…