Just as we were about to head upstairs last night, the house filled up with smoke. It smelled like it might have been coming from the woodstove, kind of sweet, and grandpa's pipish, but we couldn't be sure. So we looked. The upstairs was innocent, no tinge of smoky air there. We therefore descended deep into the bowels of the cellar.

I hate it down there. The stairs are steep with a wobbly railing. It is dark and crawly and full of weird things left behind by previous tenants. I just don't like it. However, there was no doubt that the smoke was thicker down there, although it didn't trigger the smoke detectors.

The scent was evasive, clearly there, but not traceable. The boss took off the back of the oil furnace, the fan of which runs air over the plenum from the woodstove, to turn hot water into hot air to warm us. The belt that drives the fan was severely cracked, not much more than flapping idly at the pulley, so he replaced it with one that was hanging from the chimney and turned it on.

Bang, it sprang into action faster than it has run in years. Dust billowed out of the registers all through the house. We have had at least THREE different repairmen look at three different problems with that old air furnace in the past couple of years, including an annual tune-up, wherein they are supposed to find problems like that. None of them spotted the cracked belt. It has certainly been that way for a long time, as the furnace is pushing more air than it ever has in the four years we have lived up here. Boy am I going to have some dusting to do. We checked all the smoke detectors and left Gael the run of the house. She will wake us up if a heifer so much as bawls off key, so we figured she would be a good addition to the more traditional safety technology.

Then as a last resort I went outside with a flashlight to see if I could find the source of the smoke. Sure enough there was a soft, gentle, southerly breeze blowing. The plume of steamy smoke from the stove curled quietly up over the apple tree and right down to the cellar window. Talk about a wild goose chase. Oh, well, I FINALLY got the boss to show me how to change the furnace filters and we found the bad belt. We should be warmer now.