A Heated Childhood Memory

A Pointless Story
I grew up in a time warp, similar to the way elisem describes her own childhood. Not that I went to a one-room schoolhouse. But I have some interesting experiences of childhood.

When I was growing up we heated our house with wood. Our house had been built when electricity was cheap so we had electric baseboard heaters. Now after our house was built electricity became a lot more expensive and we had to stop using the switch on the wall like "normal" Americans. My dad, being the Jeremiah Johnson type, decided that we has more than enough trees to heat our house.

So for the next decade the whole family spent summers helping my dad cut down pine trees and splitting them up into firewood. It was part of the chores to thin out our section of the forest. Then in the fall we would inevitably not have quite enough for the whole winter, so we would get in a load of wood, often very cheap, and spend a Saturday stacking it up all over the back deck.

My mom had to go to work in 1986 when Frontier airlines, the first one, went bankrupt. So thereafter I went to school with a key around my neck on a shoelace. When I got home with my sister we would crumple up some newspaper for kindling and put it and a few logs onto the coals. Hopefully there would be coals when we got home, otherwise it took more work to get the thing going. I got rather good at making the fire really hot. If it were dark we could see the metal glowing faintly.

There were many experiments conducted on that stove, like testing the flash point of wood and melting point of pennies. And I got rid of some embarrassing stuff there. I burnt some books with homosexual content in a fit of righteousness one day. I had bought them out of curiosity and ended up destroying them to make myself feel better. Young gay, repress thyself. Also I tried cooking various things on top of the stove. None of them worked out too well, especially not the chestnuts or acorns.

I don’t' regret growing up the way I did, but by gosh I'm a dyed in the wool city boy! I've lived the country life and I don't want to go back!

Almost Pointless

I have a mild problem with cold. My fingers and toes get easily chilled probably due to how little body fat I have and the thinness of my extremities. So while I'm as butch as any Coloradan, I can't help but be a bit sensitive to the cold.

When my family took up downhill skiing I was always the one to head inside first. My dad would always be encouraging me to stay out a bit longer, but after two or three ski runs I would head in to warm up for half an hour. I can understand where he was coming from, try to get good value for the increasingly expensive ski lift tickets, but it sometimes made me reluctant to go.

I keep on intending to get some Bob Cratchet gloves. Something to wear around work with just my fingertips exposed so that my hands keep a bit warmer. It would be really excellent if I could find something stylish as well as a bit warm. I don't need heavy gloves or anything; after all I'm in of doors. I think that even some leather would be enough to slow the heat loss from my hands.

So if anyone sees some cool gloves without fingertips, or even some gloves that would still look cool with the fingertips cut off, do let me know! I'll pay for purchase and shipping.

Maybe I should stop by to see my friend Carlos. He owns a store called CJ's Leathers and he made that wonderfully cool Farscape vest for me. He or maybe that goth store I've heard about might have something good.