Medicated chimney sweep

This is a rerun of an essay I published Friday, November 18, 2005 entitled "A medicated chimney sweep is fun to watch"

Maybe you remember my essay on the terrors of the annual cleaning of my chimney. Well, it only got worse when we remodeled and placed a skylight on the lower-level roof exactly where the feet of the ladder are supposed to go when climbing toward the top of the chimney.

I looked at it long and hard and decided to hell with it. The ladder will not fit. I called a furnace guy who is my friend and who claimed to be able to clean my chimney. He looked at it and said he’d rather not try it, thank you.

So I called Mr. professional chimney sweep. He showed up with all the markings of a pro - dirty face and hands and a black blanket to put on the floor. He did not, however, wear the tall hat I had hoped for.

Trouble with him was he had an operation on his toe only two days earlier and was still on pain medication, which I quickly came to believe was making him loopy.

For one thing, his ladder slipped and he was dangling from the slippery slate, upper-level roof by hanging onto the chimney. I happened to be watching and I scurried up to the first-level roof and righted his ladder. Otherwise, he might still be there.

Later, he came within three feet of spilling soot from the interior stove pipe as he was taking it out of the house. The crap went, instead, all over the back steps.

At last he was ready to put it back together, a job that has its own combination, but one that should be easy for a non-medicated chimney sweep. It took my friend a good half hour because he kept breaking tools and making mistakes.

The whole thing got pretty tedious but I consider it a success: The chimney is clean, he didn’t break anything of mine, and he didn’t kill himself. But I had to agree with him when he muttered something about maybe he should have waited another day before coming back to work.