This is not another chapter, so calm down already. However, in the moments after posting the first chapter, I received several messages, and they were mostly positive, so I’m going to press forward with that whole idea and see where it goes.
Anyway, down to the meat of this post..
So, i’m home for the Christmas. Back down in Hobbs, where it all started. Something like that. And I just had a funny flashback. Sit back and enjoy this little story…
So, long ago, back when I was a teenager, we decided to frame in the back patio and make it into more of a room. It was about a 15 by 15 foot area, with a roof, and a storage shed making up one side of it, the other two sides being the house, with a gap by the house and the shed for side yard access, and the fourth wall being a view into the property behind our house (although this was mostly obscured with honeysuckle).
As such, we framed it in, and it went pretty well. Not too long after, we got a deal on some 1×4 planking, nice stuff, and bought a bunch of it. Ended up building this big deck sort of thing, and putting a hot tub on it. Turned out very nice.
Now, the hot tub required a 20 amp outlet by its lonesome. I knew this. My Dad knew this. I told him we needed to get about 100′ of Romex and run a new circuit off the breaker panel, drop in a new outlet, and be done with it. ‘Naaaaah,’ he said. ‘Just wire it into this outlet over here’. I protested, but was silenced. OK, whatever, I wired it in. Hot tub worked, all was happy.
Time goes by. A week or so later, I am up late, in my room, laying across my bed, head over the edge, reading a book on the floor. The lights flicker, like…. dim down, flicker, and come back up. I just knew something bad had just happened. At this point, I had not connected it to the hot tub.
I got up, snuck into my parents room, which was just on the other side of the wall from where the hot tub sat on its decking. As I walked in to the thunderous snoring, I noted something important. The electrical outlet above the head of the bed was glowing.
Obviously this was not a good thing. I made some noise to this fact, startling my folks into alertness. Suddenly they became aware of the fact that the outlet was glowing. I ran past them, out the door to the deck, and yanked the plug. The siding on this side was turning black near the outlet. My dad ran out to the garage, and I picked up a hammer and started whacking the siding with the claw side, peeling back fibrous siding. The blackness was spreading.
Dad rushes in with an ancient fire extinguisher, which turned out to be the white powered salt kind of stuff, and he hits the wall with it. Didn’t help much. I keep beating at the wall. Dad runs and shuts the power off. I have a good hole now, I can see the stud, and it looks a bit charred. Squirt more extinguisher in there. After a few beatings, the blackness stops.
I unscrewed the outlet from the wall, pulled it out. Melted wires. The hot tub had been sucking down rich, chunky amps and managed to melt the wire and almost start a full fledged fire.
My folks left the hot tub unplugged. There was a 220V outlet nearby that was for a welder, back in the day, that we ended up rewiring for that hot tub, which was eventually sold. The outlet was put back in the wall, melted wire removed.
Today, the deck has been slid out into the middle of the floor (which makes no sense to me, it was custom cut to fit around some steps and stuff, but whatever). Back there now is the washer and dryer.
Why is this all important? Why did I waste your time with this story?
Well, this room stays cold, so when my Mom bakes, she puts things back there to keep them chilled. I just went back there to snag a cherry pie. I removed it from on top of the dryer, and I noted something. Some manner of needlepoint hanging on a nail on the wall above the dryer. I reached up, and pulled it back from the wall.
There in front of me, was a hole. Inside it I could see the back of an outlet box, and a view of a charred 2×4. White dots crowded into the ugly edges of the hole. It has to have been 10 years now. And nothing has changed here. Nothing. I put the needlepoint back, and took the pie inside.
Yeah, who says you can never go home? ‘Cos i’ve been home.
Happy Holidays.
leave a reply