Smells like winter
Written by Glen Hughes on December 16th, 2008 No Comments
One of my favorite things about living in Salem MA during the fall and winter is the wonderful aroma. I’m not talking about the great smells coming from restaurants as you walk around town but the unmistakable smell of people using their fireplaces.
McIntire Fireplace in the Pierce Nichols house
The first apartment I had in Salem was a little one bedroom on Essex overlooking Jerrys Army – Navy. It had a fireplace and one fake log would warm up the place for hours. Last year I moved to a much bigger place and one of the requirements was that it had a fireplace. Since most of the homes and apartments are rather old many of them come with working fireplaces. I now have a large hearth type fireplace that takes quite a few logs to get it up and running.
You hear from various sources that using a fireplace in the winter is a waste as it creates an outlet for the warm air of your house to escape. Yet when you head out on a cold crisp winter evening you can see and smell that plenty of people around town are enjoying the warmth of a fire. I’d like to think that a few hundred years ago Salem may have smelled similar to those nights. I conveniently forget about the modern conveniences of indoor pluming, trash pickup and the conspicuous lack of farm animals roaming our streets.
With the recent ice storm hitting just to our north many people are relying on their fireplace as a necessity. Luckily we in Salem are not forced to do that however, many of us do use it through the winter. For those of you who strike up the fire I’d loke to know why you use your fireplace. Is it only for ambiance during special occasions or do you use it to heat your home or reduce your heating bill?
