Needed no longer

The recent and rapid demise of the open flame.

Here in Old Town Alexandria, the older houses are built with basements that often have windows at street level.  Basements are very practical things, cool in summer and warm in winter, especially useful before the invention of mechanical climate control.  (No doubt the muddy streets of years ago also made it useful to have the main floor above ground level.)  In addition to windows letting in some natural light, these basements often have small cast-iron doors.  Mostly locked shut now, these were places to take delivery of coal. That was the main way to stay warm in winter and to cook food all year around.  We’ve seen no coal deliveries in the years we’ve lived here; it’s no longer an important method of cooking or climate control in Alexandria.

But open fires have been a vital part of being human for almost as long as there have been humans.  Paleontologists study whether Neanderthals, Denisovians or our other kin built fires; we admit we haven’t followed the latest research; but certainly fire is a major part of the human ability to control the environment.  And it was an integral part of life until very recently.  Within living memory a solid-fuel stove or fireplace was where the cooking was done, and the major contributor to warmth in cold weather.

And to other things.  London used to be famous for its pea-soup fogs, combinations of humidity and coal smoke: weather that killed.  Smoke is not good to breathe.  And the smoke of millions of people living together in a city certainly shortens the lives of the inhabitants.

That’s gone now.  It happened rather suddenly; as we noted in talking of horses, an integral part of life since before history has vanished in a generation.  An irrefutable sign: possession of a fireplace is now a luxury, one adding to the value of a home (or rent of an apartment).  We may have seen no coal deliveries in Alexandria, but pickups with cut firewood do appear now and then.  Wood is much less efficient and amenable as a fuel than coal.  But it’s much better for watching flames and feeling primal or cozy.  Even in our consultants’ Boy Scout youth, the campfire was being discouraged or only used for ceremonial purposes, and portable gas stoves emphasized (to preserve the forests).

Gone; for this part of the world, in the last half-century.  Open fires are still the only means of cooking for a large part of the world’s population, and the only means of heating for nearly as many.  International aid organizations are trying to change that, or at least to make fires more efficient and smoke less deadly.  It remains to be seen how quick and complete their success will be.  Until it happens, we remain in the middle of a sudden transition from the distant past to the future.