Fire, Fire Everywhere

Newsletter 2026-05-11

Children crave fire. It’s not the scariest thing about them, but it’s in the top five. Saturday, my thirteen-year-old, Mae, asked if we could make s’mores over the fire pit. It was a suboptimal request. The microwave makes s’mores with far more precision and less risk. To kids, the best flavor is danger. Then again, Lola once started a microwave fire at her sister’s house by trying to reheat leftovers on a not-microwave-safe plate. The decorative fireworks in the design turned into real fire in seconds. While none of us will ever let Lola live it down, the truth is that it just as easily could have happened to me. I’ve never read a warning label on the bottom of a paper plate, and I’m not going to start now. If skipping that vital safety step means I occasionally burn down my house, so be it. We ended up not making s’mores Saturday because Mae got distracted and wandered away, but her request made me consider all the various receptacles for fire in and around our house. We have entirely too many ways to burn things. Please don’t tell my insurance company.

The fire pit we likely would have used Saturday is on our front porch. That seems like a fire hazard, but it barely produces flames. It’s a round table with a ring for propane surrounded by glass beads. The table is too heavy to tip over, and the flames are too small and poorly supplied to easily spread. If the manufacturer replaced the flames with a strip of LEDs, I doubt I would notice, other than that our s’mores would be a little undercooked. Despite my earlier diatribe against warning labels, I do remember the one on the table, mainly because it was printed in huge letters right on the box. It said the table was not supposed to be used for cooking. In my defense, igniting a marshmallow isn’t really cooking. Then again, neither is heating up frozen chicken tenders in an air fryer. Now that I think about it, it’s possible I’ve never actually cooked anything. If you want a homemade meal, you should go to a better house. It’s good that Mae got distracted because getting the fire table up and running again would have taken some work. The propane tank was on the other side of the yard and might be empty. Also, the AA battery that’s supposed to power the ignitor has likely succumbed to the elements and corroded into acidic dust. Those aren’t the particles I want added to my burned-but-not-cooked marshmallows. The best s’more taste like bad choices and shortened lifespans.

For a more authentic experience, we could have used our smokeless fire pit. It’s not one of the name brand ones that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, depending on the size. I know you’re shocked to hear I didn’t buy the best of the best. As always, I only want the mediocrest for my family. The fire pit is a small, metal octagon with ventilation holes that are supposed to suck in the smoke when the fire reaches a certain temperature. Before it hits that point and after it cools down, it smokes like it failed to elect a new pope. You have to be ready to move your lawn chair or face the consequences, which are really just smelling like smoke. To Lola, that’s a fate worse than death. She absolutely hates the smell. When Mae and our eleven-year-old, Lucy, come back from their BSA campouts, all of their stuff either goes directly into the washing machine or gets left on the porch. The girls are lucky Lola lets them back in the house. One time I walked by some people who were smoking and Lola made me sleep in my van for a week.

Photo by Cullan Smith on Unsplash

During the few minutes when the fire is exactly the right temperature to be smokeless, the experience is glorious. I don’t fully understand the science, but I suspect the entire thing is powered by ghosts. We usually set it up on the cement slab behind our house, where we enjoy the ambiance of utility poles and the surrounding parking lots. If I wanted a good view, I’d look at my computer’s lock screen, which gives them to me for free. The biggest problem with enjoying that fire pit isn’t the barren vistas, but the weather. If it’s too cold, I don’t want to be out there in the first place; if it’s too hot, I don’t want a fire. It’s hard to find that exact sweet spot where there’s the right amount of chill in the air to be perfectly cancelled out by a small pellet-fueled fire. That’s about one and a half days every fall. Instead of going through all the trouble of setting up the fire pit, I could put on a jacket or simply go indoors. If cavemen had houses, they never would have discovered fire. Then all the ghosts hiding the smoke never would have had a job.

We could also enjoy the flames inside. We have a place for a fire, not that we’ll ever place a fire there. In the eighteen years since we’ve moved in, I haven’t been tempted to use our fireplace. The gas lines leading to it were either shut off or disconnected by the last owner. At least I think that’s what he said at the initial showing before we bought the place. Forgive me if I don’t remember crucial details like whether or not a certain fixture will burn down my house if I turn it on. If the gas is still connected, I can’t stress enough how much of a hazard it is. The gas insert at the bottom features two ceramic logs out in the open with holes where the gas is supposed to come out. It would be very easy to accidentally fill the house with deadly vapors and then blow up the place by lighting a candle. The fact that the house remains unexploded makes me think the lines really were disconnected. If we had a “blow up everyone” switch, surely Waffle would have flipped it by now. I love it when survivor bias and confirmation bias line up.

As much as I hate the gas insert, I love the woodwork around it. The ornate Victorian mantle made me fall in love with this house. It’s as beautiful as it is useless. I hope someone writes that about me in my obituary. The craftsmanship is amazing, but it takes up most of one wall, reducing the already limited space for furniture in our living room. Two walls have giant, open doorways, and one has non-functional wooden ornamentation. We’re limited to jamming all of our seating along one wall and in the corners. We should have taken that into account before we had so many kids.

If the fireplace is going to take up that much essential real estate, we should at least use it. We could replace the current, suicidal insert with a sealed glass one that was actually functional. That raises issues of both utility and cost. We’d need to spend thousands of dollars to have a new insert installed, and, once we did, I’m not sure if we’d actually use it. Even the best fireplaces aren’t especially efficient. You need to pay a premium for one that doesn’t make you lose more heat than it produces. There are cheaper ways to waste energy. For example, I could stop reminding my kids to close the front door. Their natural instinct is to make me use our existing furnace to heat the whole neighborhood. Not that closing the door keeps the house that much warmer thanks to our World War I-era insulation. The original owner didn’t have the budget for asbestos, and it shows. If you want to stay warm in this house, you don’t need a working fireplace. You need another blanket. It’s why I spend most of the winter in a cocoon on the couch.

So far, I’ve described three sources of fire that we either seldom or never use. The most dangerous flash point in the house is the only one we activate with any regularity: the stove. Ironically, adding fire there actually made the house safer. Before our current gas range, we had an electric stove. I broke it when I forgot a tea kettle on a heating element. The water boiled out and the bottom melted, cracking the glass stovetop. I used my expensive mistake as an excuse to blow even more money and upgrade the kitchen. We added a gas line and swapped the positions of our appliances, moving the fridge away from the doorway and positioning the stove next to it. The new gas range was fancy for us but not for the average HGTV couple. The dog walker and stamp collector duo with a budget of two million dollars wouldn’t have given our kitchen a second look. It’s their loss.

The new burners with real flames don’t make the food taste better, but they do add a small chance of a catastrophic explosion. It makes me the most nervous when one of the burners doesn’t immediately light. I wonder how many seconds I can wait without accidentally filling the room with enough gas to burn off my eyebrows. It hasn’t happened yet, either because the stove doesn’t actually put out that much gas or because my eyebrows are heartier than I thought. I doubt even a direct encounter with a flamethrower would do much to them. I would be a pile of ashes with eyebrows still in place. The impressive part is my kids haven’t found a way to do any damage with the gas burners, either. Even Waffle uses them. She regularly cooks herself scrambled eggs for breakfast, making her ten times more self-sufficient than I was at her age. Arguably, she’s more self-sufficient than I am now. Lola and I trust the kids to use the stovetop even when we’re not home. That’s the time they’re the least likely to use it. When we tell them to feed themselves because we’re away, they prefer ramen cups and Easy Mac. That should concern us more. The worst cooking disaster I know of was when my sister-in-law Alice microwaved a cup of Easy Mac without water. She had to throw away the microwave. Years later, Lola, her sister, started a microwave fire with a decorative plate. There’s something going on with that family. The fire department should put them on a watch list.

My kids are more likely to start fires in the woods than in my kitchen. Mae and Lucy build fires constantly for BSA Scouts. Mae is even in the elite Firecrafters sub group. To gain entry, she had to start a fire with a bow and later keep one going all night. I’ve never done either feat. Instead of worrying so much about flames in and around my house, I should outsource all fire duties to her. If she wants s’mores, she can decide what we’re using to cook them and handle the set up and tear down. I trust her, and, more importantly, I’m lazy. The goal of parenthood should be to have children who can toast your marshmallows for you. It’s the only mark of independence that counts.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James