When The House is on Fire, Stay off The Toilet (A Cautionary Christmas Eve Tale of My Youth)
By: Dave Ramsey
Tags: Christmas, Wood Burning Stove, Humor, Texas, Fire

North East Texas was full of snow oddly enough. Snow falls in East Texas once every other year or so. Snow falls in large quantities every other 10 to 20 years or so. This was one of those heavy snow years. I don’t remember the snow falling so it must have fell past my bedtime and I awoke to a winter wonderland. Snow was everywhere the eye could gander. Resting high on fence-posts and billowing up where the hot sun had scorched only a month prior. This was right before Christmas but what I asked Santa for had already arrived. I hurriedly busied myself following my older brother and older cousin around getting the benefit of their teenage and early 20’s ingenuity. This consisted of building a giant snowman and turning the bottom of a ping pong table into a sleigh.

Quickly, my pestering turned to using my seven year old weight as ballast for the sleigh. I zoomed around as they pushed with instructions to launch snowballs at Kevin’s girlfriend Ruth and others gathered by the fence. Then I was told the horse “dranking-pond” was frozen well enough for me to stand on. Now, this seemed reasonable since dad had to take an axe to the frozen bathtub so our horses Prissy and Mandy could get a drink, but that was only a foot of water. Of course familial peer pressure mixed with encouragement gently nudged my moon-booted feet forward. With intense trepidation I unsurely tested the edge of the ice. God must have given me some sort of intense ice to water ratio intuition because although my cousin was standing on top of the ping pong sled jumping up and down upon the ice, fear still gripped me. Sensing this, my brother Chad, must have seen on opportunity to teach me a lesson on confronting my fear. Before I had the chance to react he and fear seized me with an uncontrollable grip and launched me onto the ice.

My bony knees acted as the perfect ice breaker. I was thigh high into the water as Kevin and Chad stared in amazement and fear of my Father’s retribution then laughed a surprised laugh with a worrisome finish. My velour tracksuit that grandma had given the Christmas before was doing a fine job of sucking up half the pond as I crawled to the snowy bank and quickly made my way to the confines of the drafty house.

Our 100 year old two story house was not up to the challenge of handling this rare deep freeze. It was a picturesque house complete with a barn, horses and a rumored overnight stay by one Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens. Unfortunately stories from small town historians and fine ambience can’t get ones backside toasty on a freezing season such as this. The limited heat was provided by two roaring fireplaces and one powerful wood burning stove. The problem with this old and lovely house was that it had high ceilings so the heat escaped quickly to the nether regions and left our bones frigid and bodies huddling. This is when I found the joy and unique challenge of peeing on a frozen toilet bowl and how to survive a night sleeping under a very static electric blanket. The fear of electrocution increases greatly when ones imagination is stimulated with static shocks here and there.

The wood-burning stove was the main source of heat and it was being feed a healthy diet of horse drawn firewood that was ping-pong sledded in from our back wooded acre. This stove saved our lives that Christmas and almost doomed us as well. It was always burning and belching white smoke across the neighborhood of our Blossom, Texas homestead. After the chilling experience of playing with the big boys, I decided that I’d go back and play with my old friend who was never too kind or too harsh, myself. This meant my imagination could run wild and it quickly ran itself to playing with the snow around the leaking septic tank. I found that the warm brownish liquid was great at forming the ice and creating fun snow channels. It was a real blessing for me that the pipe running into the septic had frozen and broke thereby allowing me limitless options for my creativity and germs to run rampant.

This was turning out to be the best winter ever of my young life as I enjoyed the poo water and then went inside to contaminate others and share hot chocolate. Their joy from almost freezing me to death would soon turn to suffering and the circle of life which is the plumbing system would continue to haunt them and surprise me. We were invited to the pastor’s Christmas Eve party which was only a mile away. I asked Mom if we could have the horses pull the ping pong sled but she said the station wagon would have to suffice. We had an alcohol-free fruit punch fueled evening as Kevin stayed home to keep fueling the stove. We returned later all hyper with sugar and thoughts of M&M’s dancing in our heads to find Kevin excitedly greeting us at the door saying something about a strange smell etc etc etc who cares? I had to go to the loo. I ran up to the second floor landing where the bathroom was located, adjacent to my room, and quickly got down to business. Now I don’t recall doing much reading whilst sans trousers at such a young age but to be honest, I like to take my time. Many people in life talk about the “hurry up and wait mentality” as a horrendously negative thing. Now in regards to horrendously negative interstate traffic I concur. Where buffoons with oversized vehicles and egos cut you off to only be sitting in traffic two minutes later right next to you. Neanderthals.

Now there is a lot of drama and who hasn’t had a lot of embarrassment attempting to “hurry-up” to the toilet but once there, I find the waiting to be rather relaxing. As I was mulling over the apple cider and tasty things I’d tasted that Christmas Eve I was starting to relax as I heard some very unrelaxing sounds coming from my room. Dad, Kevin, and maybe Mom and others were having a heated discussion growing more and more animated about the heated wallpaper in that room. Apparently there was something of a burning smell… a thinness to the wall…. “Smoke”… “hot….Really hot!!!… footsteps… thud…. Thwack…. What in the world was going on out there? Rip…. “It’s open, they just wallpapered over it…” Now more ripping noise filled the air as footsteps were creaking old wooden boards left and right as I tried my best to decipher these coded noises. I heard Mom saying something about taking little sister Marianne to the safety of downstairs as more noises erupted along with my brain. I couldn’t figure out what was going on but I was hoping if sweet little Marianne was being rescued I would be next. Surly they would come for me soon.

Then, bam! the door opened up and there stood every boy’s hero, Dad. He was there to whisk me to safety. I knew he wouldn’t forget little ole me especially when my pants were acting as shackles around my ankles. Yet he didn’t seem to notice me as he hurriedly filled a cup of water. Well I suppose getting a drink would be smart before having to carry me down the long flight of stairs to safety since I was a little heavy now and he probably needed to stay hydrated and all… What!!!, Thirsty at a time like this when everyone else seemed to be running for the hills. Now I could smell the smoke and even hear more running and scurrying around as he left with his cup of water and politely closed the door. He was gone. No bathroom this side of the Mississippi had ever heard the clatter of such intense dispensing of toilet paper on this holy and smokey Christmas Eve. All through the house all creatures were stirring and most likely the mice were well on their way to the warm protection of the hay in the fire free barn. I completed the paperwork in record time as commotion and stronger traces of smoke filled the air. By no means at all was this what I wanted for Christmas. I couldn’t see how the house burning down while I was in such a vulnerable position would somehow bring a Hot Wheels racetrack under the tree. Maybe Santa was running out of ideas on how to make Christmas exciting. This is what I get for wishing for a Fireman’s hat too. Thankfully, I wasn’t much of a hand-washer at the time so I was down the stairs as fast as my thin little legs could take me as the clatter and yelling seemed to subside. All that fear and commotion for nothing.

It turned out that an ember was trapped in the flue that went up through the house and a previous owner had just wallpapered over the hole. This is not a good technique for covering up a stove pipe hole on the second floor, but in this case it saved our house. If dad hadn’t been able to rip the wallpaper and pour water down the stove pipe the fire and heat would’ve escalated and most likely burned the house down in seconds.

In dangerous situations like this they say it’s all about God’s timing or nature’s calling in this case. It was humorous timing for me also to be caught with my pants down as well. There would be many more instances of shorn pants humor to follow throughout my life. Just remember gang, when your family is ignoring you in an emergency they might actually be saving your life. Once the commotion subsided, I went outside and resumed my warm septic water playing time, relieved with the thought that any problems that arose, even around Christmas, my Father would be there to fetch a cup of water for my benefit. That’s always good to know. My your glasses be full of Cheer this year as well as full of fire quenching water.