"Clayton Emery - This Old Weird House - Furnace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

Furnace
This Old Weird House
by Clayton Emery
Okay. I've got gaping holes in my house, I have to buy the
neighbors a new dog, the FAA and FBI have cordoned off the
neighborhood, television crews have blocked the road, my wife is
screaming and -- the last straw -- the noise woke the kids.
It's my own fault. I broke Homeowner's Rule #1.
Leave well-enough alone.
&&&&&-----&&&&&
It all started because we weren't burning much heating oil.
None, in fact.
Now you expect a few quirks in an old house. And this house was
older than most. So old that not even the Hysterical Society knows
when it was built. And of course, with an old house, you expect to
make a few repairs. (Same as a new one.) Owning a house is
actually a race to see if you or the mortgage dies first, and before
the sills collapse, the roof falls in, the water main implodes, etc.
Except we were saving money in one tiny spot, which was, we
weren't burning any heating oil. Not a drop. In a winter when
people wondered whether to sell the children or simply sign the
deed over to the oil company. According to my neighbors, I saved
so much money I could stuff it in the walls of the guest bedroom
instead of insulation, which amounts to the same thing.
Now I'll say right off, I am not an old house fan. My ideal house
would come shrinkwrapped with a pair of scissors and a green
concrete lawn. But my wife's family hails from so far back they
sneer at the DAR as if they were the homeless, so The Doll fell in
love with this heap right away. I've been married long enough to
say, "Yes, dear," right away to save time. Besides, this was my
chance to show up my two-condos-one-in-Florida-one-in-Virginia
father-in-law. So I bought this house and one each of Sears'
Craftsmen tools (they really do replace 'em if you break 'em,
although I'm testing the limit), and I became Mr Fixit.
And it's fun, in a way, if your idea of joy is digging a mouse nest
out of a live electrical socket on a wet wall while holding a
flashlight in your mouth so the spiders have an even chance to
explore your teeth. Then driving to the hardware store where all
the folks know your first name, and enjoy a good laugh at your
questions.
But weird things happen in old houses.
Like three months into this icy winter, we had yet to buy a gallon
of heating oil. I knew I had oil heat, because it said so on the Real
Estate Purchase & Sales Agreement, so presumably there was a
furnace in the cellar that burned oil. I could see outside, in back of
the tiger lilies under a few leaves (okay, a lot of leaves) that I had
an oil intake. And blue-and-orange oil trucks were thicker in my
neighborhood than yellow school buses. The Doll, who handles
the money, asked, Everyone else needs oil, honeybunch, so why
not us? Could I maybe Do Something About It?