if one is good, two is better....

Life at the end of the street has always been an adventure.

Years ago, long before I lived in the house I do, my family lived in this neighborhood.  In fact we had 2 households of family here.  And our exploits were probably just as entertaining to someone else.

On a winter's eve, while I was away at college, my Mother decided to start a fire in the fireplace.  She didn't want to go through the major procedure of collecting kindling and building a proper fire, she just wanted a little fire glow in the family room.  So she pulled one of those artificial fireplace logs.

And since the one seemed so small in our large wood burning fireplace, she decided to disregard the instructions and put two in at once.

There is a reason they say to only use one, these suckers burn REALLY hot.

And rapidly a roaring flame tornado was whirling up the chimney.  I'm told from the street your could see flames coming out of the chimney.  This caused a bit of alarm and the fire department was called.  Conveniently one of the volunteers on the truck was a friend of mine from High School and kid from down the street.  Needless to say, it was bad enough for my mother to have the fire trucks roaring down the road, but then to have a friend's son get off the truck to assist...she was mortified.

I guess after my Great Aunt started a fire and forgot to open the flue, then discharged the fire extinguisher all over the entire family room instead of the fire (it got away from her).  Our family got the reputation of the 'fire starters' in the neighborhood.