The Furnace Man Cometh

Carmen and I were at a small dinner party last night at a fancy dancy house up in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. Just before everyone arrived, our host dropped a six-pack of beer in the garage, and was in the process of cleaning it up when we arrived. This reminded me of a classic Emerson moment from January of 1968 in Odenton, Maryland.

My dad had a tooth pulled on this bitter cold Saturday morning. The dentist stuffed his mouth with gauze and sent him home. Our furnace was on the fritz, so we built a fire in the fireplace in the basement, and my dad was lying on the couch recovering in front of the fire. I was also in the basement, playing with my new birthday present, a road race set.

The furnace man was coming sometime around noon, so my mother went to the grocery store right after bringing home the tooth-pullee. They liked to watch Saturday Night At The Movies with a tall glass of Squirt spiked with gin to drink, and they were out of gin, so she also went to the liquor store. She came home and carried in the groceries through the basement and up the stairs to the kitchen- only the handrail snagged the paper bag, ripped it, the gin bottle fell out and shattered all over the basement floor.

Princess, my big ol' German Shepherd dog had two pet peeves: people who came in trucks, and the ringing of the door bell. So when the furnace man came, he racked up two strikes with the dog. Princess was already growling and barking when the door bell rang, and she ran to the front door to refine her warning. My dad bellowed, "Get the dog! Get the dog!"

I ran up the stairs in my socks. Oh yeah, did I mention that my mother had just waxed the floor at the top of the stairs? So I hit the wax, fell and slid across the short stretch of floor until I was stopped by my shin bashing against the corner of a doorway wall. "Waaaaaaaaaaahhh," I screamed in severe pain. (I still have a crease in my shin bone at that impact point.) Dad was still yelling "Get the dog! Get the dog!" with a big wad of gauze in his mouth. I grabbed Princess' collar and opened the door.

I wish I had had a camera handy to capture the look on the furnace man's face. Here was this teen-aged boy, limping and howling in pain, barely restraining a big German Shepherd that was barking and growling and straining to get at him, my dad bellowing unintelligibly from the basement, and the house reeking of gin. He ran in, dashed down to the furnace, also in the basement, fixed it in no time flat, and got out of there as fast as his legs could carry him. We would love to have heard what he told his wife when he got home.