Heartlight

Commentary by Ron Rozelle

From the recent editon of Brazos Monthly Magazine

‘What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows andthe lamp burning bright …’                   – Gustave Flaubert,  Madame Bovar

The latest issue or AARP Magazine that landed in our mailbox has an interesting bit at the bottom of page 15 titled ‘Not Every Flame is the Same’ (not referring, for those of you easily led astray, to old loves).  It’s a concise guide to four types of fireplaces  intended, I guess, as useful information for retired people who are considering getting one.

But most retired people I know either already have a fireplace or have spent much of their lives in close proximity to one.

Firesides have traditionally been considered places of intimacy and comfort, good places where families feel safe and warm, and not just because of the flames.  President Franklin Roosevelt opted to call his reassuring radio talks to Americans fireside chats. Weather he was actually seated by a fireplace is unknown. It wasn’t television, after all, so he couldn’t be seen. He might have been at the drinks trolly where he mixed cocktails every afternoon, or in the White House map room figuring the best route into the world war already raging.  But listeners imagined him by a fire, at hearth and home, his words as comforting as firelight. 

Whenever I’ve dined in a restaurant that has a big fireplace roaring and popping on a cold night, I’ve felt downright deprived if I wasn’t seated close to it.  And one of my fondest memories is of one morning in Europe when, having been told by the publican that I couldn’t legally be served a beer until an hour later, I sat in a wingback armchair by his good fire and picked up a newspaper.  No sooner had I opened it he was sitting a pint of Guinness on the little table beside me.  “I thought you might like this while you’re waitin’” he said.

I’ve sat beside, or in front of, three of the types of fireplaces reviewed in that magazine in my various homes and have no desire or intention of having anything to do with the fourth.

My childhood and teen years were spent up in Oakwood, and the brick woodburning fireplace, the first of AARP’s considerations, was sort of the altar in that fine home, its proverbial hearth.  My father taught me how to construct a perfect fire in it: first a solid backlog, oak or pecan, then pieces of pine kindling atop crumpled up pages of an old copy of old newspapersituated strategically and loosely – “it has to breathe,” he’d say – among split sections of wood. He’d prided himself on getting it lit with a single match.  If not, he blamed the match. Our Christmas trees sat right beside that fireplace, our stockings hung on its mantle. One of my sisters was married (one of her times) in front of it.

My wife Karen and I were married in front of the fireplace in my first home in Lake Jackson and, a year later, we moved into a larger house with a larger fireplace where we lived for three decades and raised our three daughters. All of which wanted fires built as often as possible, sometimes even when the air conditioner had to turned on to balance the temperature.   After several years of toting wood inside and then cleaning out their ashes we finally had gas logs (the second type mentioned by AARP) installed. Which meant no more mess and the convenience of simply turning it on and turning it off. I tried not to imagine what my father would have thought about the effortless ease of that.

When our chicks had flown and Karen and I retired to an apartment in Pearland to be closer to our grandchildren and the Astros (maybe in that order) one of our daughters gifted us with the magazine’s third suggestion, a big handsome electric fireplace that we simply ignite with a remote control and looks (almost) like a real fire, its illuminated flames dancing slowly over an arrangement of artificial logs that will never be consumed. That fireplace has accompanied us to three apartments.  Hemingway called Paris his ‘movable feast’; we have a movable fireplace.

The last option reviewed in the magazine is a virtual option.  “Just turn on your TV,” it says, “and stream a fireplace video from YouTube or another service.”

No, thank you!  When it comes to fireplaces, I draw the line there. At least our current one looks like a real one with its rugged faux stonework and thick dark mantle, and, when I’m reading beside it on a blustery night with an occasional small snifter of brandy, it feels like one.

The brandy helps, I think.