I moved back to Arkansas in 1990 after having lived in several different states during the previous fourteen years. The little house I ended up buying had a wood stove. My parents had a wood stove in the house I grew up in so I wasn't totally unfamiliar with wood heating. I also had a wood stove in a cute apartment that I rented when I lived in Boulder, Colorado. The stove in Boulder wasn't my primary source of heat. It was mainly an ambiance-type thing that my landlady had added to the apartment so she could charge more rent.

See the wood stove behind the rocking chair? Ambiance. By the way, that cute kitten is Muffin, my Colorado kitty. She lived for 21 years, but I am digressing from my story.....

So I had a wood stove in my house in 1990 and I felt sufficiently experienced to handle wood heating. One day I came home from school, stoked up a fire in my stove, added some wood, closed the stove door and went outside to play with my dogs in the backyard. I don't know how long I was outside, but eventually I became aware of a funny noise emanating from my house. It finally dawned on me that I was hearing the smoke alarm. (Sound familiar, Karmyn?!!) I rushed in the back door to find my house filled with smoke. My carpet behind the stove was smouldering and flames were licking up the outside of the stove pipe toward the ceiling. Aaaiiiieeeee!!! We didn't have county-wide 911 service at the time so I had to call the county sheriff's office. I was so freaked out that I forgot to tell them my address. I did remember to give my name to the dispatcher and, luckily, I live in a small town where everybody knows everybody so when the dispatcher contacted the rural fire department, the volunteer firemen knew exactly where to come. In the meantime, I had called my parents who live a little over two miles from me. It seemed I had just barely hung up the phone when my parents' truck flew down my driveway and slammed to a halt outside. My dad leapt from the truck, fire extinguisher in hand, and hit my front door at a gallop. He had that fire extinguisher spraying the minute he entered my house. ( The wood stove was all the way across the room from my front door. ) The rural fire department arrived a few minutes later. Of course, Dad had totally put out the fire, but the firemen checked out my attic and the roof and made sure my house was secure.

The firemen left. Mom, Dad and I were left standing in my livingroom staring at the trail of fire extinguisher contents leading from my front door, across furniture and across the floor to my wood stove. We started laughing. We laughed so hard our stomachs hurt. It was the laughter of relief, but it was also laughter at my dad's mad dash and heroic squirting of fire extinguisher goop all over my livingroom. To this day I remember the vision of Dad and his fire extinguisher. I hear the Indiana Jone's theme in my mind as Dad, the hero, saved the day.

My mom, ever the pragmatist, said, "Why didn't you just throw a bucket of water on that fire and put it out?" As those words echoed in my livingroom, I realized a wood stove was not for me. I never once thought of putting the fire out with water. Duh......

I sold my wood stove and started using gas for heat. A couple of months later I received a lovely red fire extinguisher as a Christmas gift. It was from Dad......just in case.