HOT TIME

Most stories start with something to quickly attract your attention, build in the middle, and end with a bang, but as we’d say down home-this ain’t one of them. This story is one I look back at and laughingly wonder how it turned out as well as it did.

In the days of the Model T Ford the tires were made of rubber without metal inside to increase their strength. Clarence read somewhere that if the old tires were cut into pieces they could be burned in the old pot belly stove and that sounded like a good idea to him. He went to the dump and found an old tire someone had thrown there and took it to his store. Outside and in back of his store Clarence kept his woodpile, chopping block, and axe.

He laid the tire on the ground and thought with a single swift blow he would cut through the tire because it was only rubber. He gave his axe his mightiest woodsman swing and when the axe blade hit the tire it sprang out of Clarence’s hands and flew several feet into the air. It landed in the deep snow and it took a few minutes for Clarence to locate it and get back to work. This time he tilted the tire so part of it was on the ground and part of it was on the chopping block. Once more he gave the axe his mightiest swing and this time the blade went about half an inch into the tire. Time after time he cut the tire until finally he cut all the way through. Clarence only wanted a small piece to put into the stove but knew he’d be there all night if he cut the tire into small pieces, so after another ten minutes of sweat producing labor he cut the tire in half. I guess by now you can figure out the axe wasn’t all that sharp. He had read that a little piece of tire would make the stove warm so it only made sense to him a big piece would make his store a whole lot warmer inside. Clarence wanted to get his store nice and warm so he took half of the tire inside and opening the stove door, stuffed it in.

The distance from the top of the stove to the ceiling was about eight feet and the smoke from the stove found its way outside through a black metal stovepipe. The damper in the stovepipe was about seven feet from the floor and of course Clarence couldn’t reach it so he had a special rod made so he could open and close the damper. Clarence had been burning wood in the stove so the damper was nearly closed so the heat would stay inside his store and not be lost to the outside night air. As soon as the tire started to burn the room began to fill with black smoke so Clarence got his rod and opened the damper to the full open position. The draft on the bottom front of the stove was closed and not allowing the air to flow freely through the stove so Clarence opened the draft to the full open position. The tire was starting to burn real well and the store was getting so warm the men sitting close to the stove had to move some distance away. Clarence closed the draft but the tire was well ablaze and the roar from the stove was getting louder and louder. He tried to close the damper but this caused the black smoke to come into the room again and he was afraid the tire smoke would enter the room and spoil his bread, cakes, and other objects that would absorb the smoke. Soon the sides of the stove started to turn from black to a light color of pink. The damper handle started to redden and the stovepipe started to get red hot.

Clarence got his rod and tried to close off the damper but the heat had swelled the damper and it wouldn’t move. The stove and stovepipe were now red and the room was getting too hot for anyone to stay inside. The The area where the stovepipe passed through the roof was doubly protected with an additional layer of tin and that was turning pink too. Clarence knew for sure his store was going to burn down. He had one of the Scoville boys go to their house across the road and bring back a ladder.

The store didn’t have running water so Clarence climbed up onto the roof and started putting all the snow he could reach on the roof around the red hot chimney. As the snow hit the chimney it melted, sizzled, boiled, and turned to steam. Somehow Clarence managed to get enough snow on the chimney to turn its color back to normal and cool it down almost to its normal temperature. He took what snow he could reach and put it down the chimney. Even before the snow reached the damper inside the chimney it melted, and turned to steam. Clarence forced as much snow as he could find down the chimney hoping to lower the heat inside the store. All the regulars were outside getting away from the high heat inside and wondering what Clarence would do next.

What Clarence didn’t know was the snow had cooled the damper in the chimney down enough to allow the damper to move. More snow landed on one side of the damper than the other and turned it to the full closed position again. Clarence stuffed the chimney as full of snow as he possibly could and started to move slowly down the roof to the ladder. The heat from inside the store had caused the snow on the roof to melt slightly and Clarence hit a slick spot and shot like a bullet from the roof to the ground.

Several of the regulars rushed over to help Clarence but he had landed in the deep snow and the fall hadn’t bothered him at all. The Scoville boy that had gone to his house for the ladder looked at Clarence and said, “If I knew you weren’t going to use the ladder to get down from the roof I would have taken it home.”

Normally that would have been enough to bring forth a few well chosen words from the store owner but right now his mind was on the store. It was still exceedingly hot inside the store but leaving the door open helped cool it down some. Clarence got his ‘damper turning stick’ and opened the damper just a crack so the black smoke would find its way outside and yet not allow the room to get too hot. The regulars started back inside when the heat had dissipated enough to allow comfortable reentrance and each took his seat without saying a word. Clarence stepped up behind his glass candy counter and once he saw the mess there he let out a string of profanities that would have added many words to the vocabulary of a sailor. Two or three of the regulars walked over to the candy counter to see what was wrong and when they had completed their mission went silently back to their seats. Every piece of soft candy in the counter was melted beyond recognition and most of his hard candy had taken on a different shape. The only things remotely resembling their original shapes were the ‘two for a penny’ jaw breakers ...and even some of them had slightly changed colors.

Clarence was scratching his head and wondered what he was going to do with the mess he had created when someone suggested he let all the candy harden, cut it up into small pieces, and sell it to the next foreigner that came into his store, especial if that person came from Boston.

Clarence had stuffed so much snow down the chimney it had melted and the fire inside the stove was on the last stage of existence. In fact, the room was starting to get cold so Clarence reloaded the stove--with wood-- and soon the room was back to normal temperature.

Everyone had been back to whittling for fifteen or so minutes and the room was as silent as widow Wilson’s bedroom during the weekday nights. Finally Gene Coran looked at his brother James and said,   “Jim, don’t you think Clarence should be on the South Lubec Volunteer Fire Fighting Squad?”

“I don’t know, Gene, but I’ve been thinking about it. Only problem is I don’t know which side he should be on. Them that puts out fires or them that starts them.

   "At least now I know what we can get him for Christmas this year, Jim.”

   “What would that be, Gene?”

   “I’ll get him a box of Lucifers and you can get him an old tire.”

   “Well, we could do that or we could have someone sharpen his axe, or even better, maybe we could get everyone to chip in and buy him a new one,”  Clarence reached for the shelf behind him and grabbed a can and threw it at Gene...only this time he threw a can of peas.