A Story I Have Been Fooling With

NMB, Florida January 19, 2002 A.H. Schectman

THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on Issues, Ideas and Reflections on the Times. Published Now and
Then. Opinions Pro or Con Are Welcome.
A STORY I HAVE BEEN FOOLING AROUND WITH
I don't know why this is but I am sure others have suffered from a
condition that is full-blown with me. I refer to trying to tell a story
that is clear in my mind but doesn't resonate with anyone else I have yet to
find.

This is a story I have been fooling around with for some time. It has
occurred to me that we no longer use "Ice houses" to the degree they were
once common. The notion here is that you can cut ice blocks out of rivers
or lakes while they are frozen and put them in insulated houses and use the
ice to cool your food in "ice boxes" throughout the summer. We had one of
these when I was a child and it was my job to empty the water pan that
collected the melted ice from under the "ice box". I got into a lot of
trouble when I forgot and the water spilled out of the overflowing pan or I
spilled it when lifting it to take it over to the sink to empty it.

My idea is that if Mother Earth provided us with ice and a method to keep
it frozen to use as a coolant over the hot summers we can do the same by
finding a way to storing the over abundant heat in summer to toast by in
winter. Making ice was the technological tool that an obsessed man used to
bring ice to people living near Neolithic lives in equatorial Amazon. His
story is told in the movie version starring Harrison Ford.

My story is based on a substance that was discovered by accident that held
heat and let it dribble out very slowly. In fact, this substance was so
good at preserving heat within itself that it was only when someone tried to
use it for some other purpose and found that this troublesome property of
too much heat ruined his experiment. The leap in imagination was one of
those fortuitous things that brought us penicillin, saccharine and other
wonders.

The story based on this idea lies somewhere in the bowels of my hard drive.
I got it going but made the mistake of trying it out on people who pooh
poohed it. This never fails to discourage me and I put the story away.
"Nebuchadnezzar's Lost Pillar" is another of these creations that may never
be finished. Maybe it was the title. I entitled my story about blocks of
this substance soaking up heat (free for the taking at the side of the road
in roasted southern states) "Get Your Hot Heat Here". Carol's Evaluation: 10
out of 10.