The creosote spilled out of the flue like a bituminous shower. I pushed and pulled, singing coal mining songs between coughing fits.

of getting the rock out, short of dismantling the chimney brick by brick. It seemed to be a choice of that, selling the house, or installing a whole new heating system. Jumping off the roof also crossed my mind.

Fortunately, my wife is made of sterner stuff. She quickly sized up the problem and came up with an ingenious solution.

Following her instructions, I returned to the ground (by the ladder) and cut down a sapling tree, about 20 feet in height and no more than 2 inches thick at the base. I dragged it into the living room, where the hole in the chimney for the woodstove was, and pushed the supple tree up into the flue. By forcing it up and then pulling it back down rapidly, I could use the sapling like a giant pipe cleaner. The room began to fill with creosote dust. All the while, my wife was sitting atop the chimney, diligently chipping at the creosote around the rock with a knife lashed to a broomstick.

The creosote spilled out of the flue like a bituminous shower. I pushed and pulled, singing coal mining songs between coughing fits. After an hour or so of toil, there was a minor avalanche, and my wife cried out that the rock had disappeared. It had, in fact, fallen past the hole in the chimney where I was working, and lodged itself a few feet farther down. I pulled my sapling out of the flue, took it to the basement cleaning door, and set back to work.

Clunk. There in the heaped-up creosote shavings was a black grapefruit. I seized it with a triumphant cry, coughed again, and marched out into the sunlight with my by now-defoliated sapling.

From the roof, my wife shouted that l should go back in and look up the chimney. When I did, I discovered that I could see her grinning down from the top. The chimney was clean as a whistle. In our desperation to get the rock out, we had entirely forgotten our original intent. But now we had a spotless flue— far cleaner, I suspect, than it might have been without the rock crisis. We had had incentive, you see.

So, if you want a chimney that you can be proud of and you are skeptical of your staying power at the job, do as I did. Drop a rock in it. Leave yourself no alternative. Or call a chimney sweep. 

Tim Clark still relies on wood to help heat his home in Dublin, New Hampshire.