Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,

Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat; 

-From the poem, Snowbound, (1866), by John Greenleaf Whittier 

Oh, how I enjoy a fire and a fireplace. 

In the late 1980s, I had a friend, who lived in Boston, down to visit at my family’s home on Summer Street in North Easton. She walked into our home, and one of the first things she commented on was that we had a fireplace. 

Fireplaces are not unusual in Easton, of course.  

But, then again, this woman grew up in Jamaica, and moved to the United States as a child. Fireplaces – a least those inside a house that are used for warmth and to foster a cozy atmosphere – are not prevalent in Jamaica. The house in which she lived in Boston did not have a fireplace.  

To my friend, having a fireplace was quite a sweet housing option and utility.   

She was right. There is something so very, very nice about a fireplace.  

Better, still, is a fireplace with flames coiling and rolling within it. 

Until the autumn of my sophomore year at Oliver Ames High School, my family lived on Andrews Street in the North Easton Village District. We lived in a converted Ames workman’s cottage that had been built in 1831.  

We didn't have a fireplace.  

I longed to live in a home that had a fireplace. 

If you looked at our neighborhood back then – defined as Andrews St., and Mechanic St., and Pond St. – there were not many indoor fireplaces.   

Oscar “Ski” Conceison, our next door neighbor and patriarch of the Conceison clan, did build a sweet outdoor fireplace on his property, which he used to cook his scrumptious “meat on a stick.”

My parents had that home built on Summer Street and it had that fireplace. We didn’t use it a lot – but we did use it. I remember one fire in which we spread lavender twigs which dispersed a pleasing scent.

I spent a good portion of Christmas Eve this year at the home on Prospect Street of Frank and Marybeth Veale, with their adult children, and the extended Veale family. The Veales are a wonderful group of people. Abundant and gracious hospitality and great food – and a variety of drink, wholesomely consumed, formed the evening. 

And there was a fire in the fireplace. We sat around the fireplace and talked, as the fire emitted a glow and warmth, and the flames, crackled, licked, hissed, pirouetted and jumped. Reddish and orange embers pulsed. 

It was nice. 

Yes, there is the excerpt from John Greenleaf Whittier’s, Snowbound, at the top of this page and which prefaced this column; the poem is rich with the imagery of burning wood and the warmth and comfort it renders. 

I first read the poem in seventh grade; it was part of the English curriculum. I had a gifted and dedicated seventh grade English teacher in Alyson Sousa, now Alyson Larabee, an OA grad, who is still teaching English in the Easton Public Schools. 

Here is another excerpt from Snowbound, with this passage beginning where the passage at the top of this page ends: 

And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed; 
The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to fire his drowsy head,
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; 
And for the winter fireside meet, 

Mr. Whittier certainly knows how to transmit to us the happy nature of fire. 

By the way, if you are looking for primo Easton winter fireplace experiences, I commend to you the hearths at the Yardley-Wood Ice Rink next to Center School and a stone's throw from the Civil War monument – and the fireplace inside the stone cottage alongside Leach Pond at Borderland State Park. Yardley-Wood Ice Rink and Leach Pond are preferred skating venues, each with the highly valued benefit of hosting a toasty and controlled blaze next to which one can keep warm and warm up.

One of my favorite places to read, research, and write is the Ames Free Library. The library is an architectural and artisan showcase. 

Henry Hobson Richardson, who ranks near the top of the list of America’s most gifted, esteemed, and accomplished architects, designed the original and main library building, which was completed in 1883.

As well – and I as I wrote in a “Muscato’s Musings” column which posted about a year ago, on Jan. 5:

"The influence and stamp of Stanford White and Augustus St. Gaudens – who along with Richardson were on the ‘A Team’ of designers and architects of ‘America's Renaissance’ and Gilded Age – are also found at the library: White's picturesque and intricate gargoyles are seen on the exterior of the library, and within, much of the beautiful woodwork, including the distinctive barrel-vaulted ceiling (made of butternut wood) in the book stacks room, are the design of White. In the Fireplace Room, the fireplace is a White creation, and its inlay relief that depicts Oliver Ames Jr. was sculpted by Gaudens.”

That fireplace is grand and beautiful, and it is located in a grand and beautiful room. 

The fireplace isn't used anymore, but I imagine many years ago when the fireplace was operational, and on a cold autumn or winter day or night, one would sit back in a comfy chair in that room, a book and periodical in hand, and also maybe a cup of good and strong coffee, and a fire burned hungrily and energetically … and … well … it just had to be a premium experience. 

Oh, how I enjoy a fire and fireplace. 

****

I noted above that the fireplace in the Fireplace Room at the Ames Free Library is no longer used; however, almost directly across from the fireplace – through the area where the research desk is located and on the wall at one end of the book stacks room – is a big screen on which sometimes plays the image of a live and flickering fireplace or a camp fire. 

It isn't the real thing, but it does help make the space pleasing and peaceful.