We were about to move from the home where I first met her, my forever wife, my soulmate and life companion. On May 16th of the year 2003 we said our vows on the carport of that home on Wildman Road in Bedford Virginia. Two young kids, barely old enough to buy alcohol, not knowing anything about the road ahead. We sat and looked into each others eyes, with our small number of friends surrounding us sitting on the wooden benches and picnic tables, and said “I do”. It wasn’t just a new chapter, book, volume, no, it was a library of stories waiting to be had. Myself being 22 years old, and her almost 24, we would start our forever journey. The challenges of the future mounted. Neither of us had a good job, I was only recently divorced from my first failed marriage, and she still had what would turn out to be a nasty custody battle to fight to get her daughter back.

But on that day, all we saw was the love in each other’s eyes.

Two weeks later, the we finally closed on the house we were living at in Bedford. For her, it was saying goodbye to a place she had called home for just about a year. For me it was house where I had lived with my ex wife, and the bad memories and stories that went along with that. The house where I burned the photos of that failed marriage just about a year and a half prior as my heart attempted to heal. It was also the house where I lived off and on and visited frequently as a child, as it was once my grandmother’s house since the early 1980s. It was on the carport of that house where I married my forever (current) wife.

Our destination was a new house in the small town of Pulaski Virginia. A small 900 square foot 3 bedroom, one bathroom house built on a hillside in Pulaski’s old side of town back in 1950. It was generally a well maintained house, despite a few rotten spots in the floor, some worn out plumbing, and a roof showing its age. But the biggest challenge of all sat in the basement.

There’s no year like that first year of marriage, when you’re still learning how to live with each other, and to understand each other’s quirks and annoyances. Many people don’t even make it beyond that first year. Fewer yet make to five.

As the holiday season of 2003 approached us, we payed the money to fill the oil tank in anticipation for that sweet heat. It was then we found out the truth about our furnace… it was subject to failure… often.

It ran for about a week, then, at some time, usually in the middle of the night, it would kick out on safety. I’d awake at about three ante meridiem, usually to the thermostat in the living room reading about 45 degrees. Me, usually in my underwear with no shirt on would creep down the stairs into the cold basement, pull the panel off the furnace, press the reset button and the unit would spring back to life. Sometimes it would run for a few days, other times it might run for an hour, other times still, it may trip out before I walked back up the stairs.

I had a job as a security guard for Pulaski Furniture at the time, a part time job that paid hardly anything, about $6.00 per hour @ maybe 20 hours per week. Furnace repair wasn’t something in our budget.

I babied the unit as much as I could. Calling around various heating and air companies, trying to get free advice to get the unit working again. My wife would send messages to the guard shack reading “furnace tripped”, where I’d know I’d have to run home real quick and rest the unit. Finally, right before the coldest months of our first winter season as a married couple, we came home from a run to the store, we saw a big plume of grey smoke billowing from the chimney. This was something we’d never seen before.

I reluctantly entered the house to investigate and was pleased that while there was black soot wafting up from the floor registers, nothing appeared to be actually burning. I went downstairs, opened the inspection door for the heat exchanger. A small orange light from below caught my eye. It was swirling around slowly up towards the top of the chamber. I became aware it was an oil flame, and the moment it caught the oxygen from the opened door, it ejected a fireball out towards my face, singing my hair and eyebrows and knocking me off the stool.

After I fell backwards, the furnace started shaking violently, with a loud and face paced “thump-thump-thump-thump-thump….” noise. I ran outside and let my eyes gaze upon the chimney where it was now billowing black smoke, thick as a coal fired locomotive engine! I debated on calling the fire department, however it settled down after about ten minutes.

After the smoke cleared, a further examination revealed that the blast had apparently forged a very large crack in the heat exhanger. The unit was no longer safe to operate, nor would it do so reliably. And so here we were, January, a newly wed, young adult couple, in our first winter, in an old 1950’s home, with no heat. Thankfully, I had a plan for just such a situation. I spent much of my childhood in the company of portable kerosene heaters and was familiar with their operation. I just so happened to have two such heaters. One round one pushing 23kBTU’s of heat, and smaller 10kBTU rectangular heater.

Those heaters saved our house and kept us warm all winter long. We’d run the round one during the day, and switch over to the smaller one at night (the round one would get too hot to where we couldn’t sleep). We ran those heaters for about two or three seasons, and even after we had replaced the furnace with a new 15kw electric unit a few years later, we’d still sometimes burn kerosene to help keep the electric bill down. The heaters had no trouble heating the entire house.

I look back on those days fondly. It was hard, there were other stories happening that first year (which will be written about later). But when I think back on those first few years, and that first Christmas in particular, it makes my heart ache with nostalgia. My wife and I, laying together in the back bedroom of our small 1950’s era house on Pulaski’s bad side, with its creaking uneven floors and cracked walls, drafty windows, and busted oil burner. My shitty job, and no real prospects for the future. Indeed, it seemed like nothing worked, nothing but our love for one another, and it persist to this day.

Our marriage has been a lot like that first year together. That busted furnace turned out to be one our easier challenges to navigate. It was a practice run. The real challenges of life had yet to arrive. But for over twenty years we have answered every challenge. It wasn’t always easy, and there were many times it came close to collapsing. But our love for each other was a fire that wouldn’t go out. She knows that whenever she needs, I’ll always come by and reset things, light the wick, and warm the place up.