Old House Handyman: An open fire inspires fond memories of a special Christmas in New York
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
Those words are stuck in my head after a few recent forced marches through departments stores. The ear worm rang out again as I prepared for the annual lighting of the pilot for our gas fireplace, and it made me wonder: Does anyone do that? Roast chestnuts on an open fire?
I recall seeing someone do that once in more than six decades — at an outdoor holiday festival of some sort — and I remember eating them once. My folks took my sisters and me to New York City for one of the most memorable Christmas presents ever, and chestnuts were involved.
Dad bought some from a street vendor and shared them with the family.
I was 12 or so at the time, and the extent of my memory of what looked like junior-size buckeyes is that they were mealy and tasted like smoke. I figured I could go another five decades or so before trying them again. That day has not yet come.
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I will enjoy many open fires, however. We have the gas fireplace in the living room of our central Ohio home, which we installed in 2005 after the Great Ice Storm of 2004, swearing with Scarlett O’Hara-style fortitude that “With God as my witness, I will never be freezing cold in my own house on Christmas Eve again!”
We also bought a portable generator in 2005 to allow us to run our gas furnace without AEP’s power, so the gas fireplace is a backup to our backup — and it provides some nice ambience on a snowy evening. (And this is a reminder that I need to pull the generator out of hibernation and check its fluids and make sure its tires are aired up, in case we need it this winter.)
We have a chiminea on the patio, in which I sometimes light juniper wood for a cozy evening outdoors — which I am known to do even in very cold, snowy weather. It’s very calming. And it can be entertaining: Juniper pops and crackles with gusto, and it has a wonderful spice scent. It also smells a little like gin, so if only we had a chestnut tree nearby, I could have gin-flavored, roasted nuts.
One other open fire available to us is a relatively new wood fireplace insert in Dad’s house at the family farm. It’s a Vermont Castings insert with a blower, glass doors and a design that keeps the heat in the house and burns so efficiently that it’s difficult to smell the wood smoke outside the house. It replaced an open fireplace that looked beautiful but sent a lot of smoke and most of the heat right up the chimney.
After splitting firewood on a frosty day, it’s a great place to sit with a warm beverage and contemplate memories of that trip to New York more than 50 years ago.
That day started like most Christmas mornings. We three kids raced into the living room full of hope for a big haul from Santa’s toy bag. And that’s where tradition ended. There were scarcely any presents under the tree.
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We three kids put on good faces, thinking Mom and Dad must be having a tough time with the finances. We each smiled politely after opening our two or three presents, but doggone-it, this was shaping up to be the worst Christmas ever.
Then Mom and Dad broke out in big smiles and said, “Go pack your bags. We’re going to New York!”
They probably did break the bank that Christmas. They had meticulously planned a transportation-themed trip, which was an amazing adventure for three small-town kids in the early 1970s. We took an Amtrak train from Canton to New York. We rode in a taxi, on the subway, in a horse-drawn carriage, on the deck of a ferry boat, and for the return to Ohio, we flew in a jet plane.
We were over the moon, just with all the rides! But in between, we saw the Rockettes, the then-new movie “1776,” Rockefeller Center’s Christmas tree, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and Central Park.
Even the chestnuts roasting on a street vendor’s charcoal fire added to a Christmas memory of a lifetime.
Alan D. Miller is a former Dispatch editor who teaches journalism at Denison University and writes about old house repair and historic preservation based on personal experiences and questions from readers.
youroldhouse1@gmail.com
@youroldhouse
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Old House Handyman: An open fire. chestnuts bring back fond memories
