Last month I had a couple of firefighters over to my house. It was a pretty spontaneous affair. Casual. As a matter of fact, I was in my pajamas when they arrived. And it was actually my 14-year-old daughter who picked up the phone and invited the guys over. I would have done it myself, but I was busy emptying a fire extinguisher into an electrical wall socket.

Note: It was not a chimney fire. I have a reputation for those bad boys, and this was not one of them. I am perfectly comfortable acknowledging my impressive ineptitude in print, but this is not one of those instances.

The fire occurred a little before 7 a.m. on a school day. I was proofreading a manuscript in a quiet, isolated room in the back of the second floor, when I heard an odd and unfamiliar sizzle coming from the sporty new bathroom we added to the house a few years ago. Our daughter picked out the colors when she was in elementary school, and so the room looks suspiciously like the inside of a Barbie dream house.

I went to investigate, more curious than alarmed. When I opened the bathroom door, I saw flames shooting out from the wall socket. They were parallel to the floor and sending out sparks like it was the Fourth of July -- rather than the middle of December.

My first thought? "Wow! Those scorch marks are going to be a real project to paint over." My second? "Uh-oh! Your house is about to go up in flames like a tiki torch."

It didn't. While my wife rounded up the cats and our daughter dialed 911, I emptied not one but two fire extinguishers into the outlet. (Yes, it took two to smother it completely.) Our cats, I should note, were uncharacteristically helpful, which means they neither hid under couches where we couldn't find them nor decided that now would be the perfect moment to start vomiting up Christmas tree needles.

In some ways, it was all stunningly anticlimactic. One minute I was pretending I was Denis Leary on that TV show about firefighters, "Rescue Me," and the next I was standing around my driveway in my pj's with real firefighters, chatting about what a close call this had been. The firefighters, of course, were decked out in their full bunker gear. Did this mean I was embarrassed? Nah. It takes more than inconveniencing half the Lincoln Volunteer Fire Department and then standing around in my pj's while everyone else is dressed to embarrass me. It's only a matter of time before I'm recruited to eat bugs on "Fear Factor."

But my neighbor Dan was there, and so were Matt and Alan and Steve and Jeff and a host of others. It was good to see them!

Now, some of you might remember that a mere three months ago, at the start of National Fire Safety Week, I chronicled in this very space my paranoia about fire. I noted how when I was a little boy my bed had started to smolder while I was sleeping, and burst into flames moments after I went to ask my parents for a drink of water. (The culprit then had been a nightlight pressed against the bedding.) As my wife observed once the firefighters had left our house the other day, "This probably hit all your hot button fears."

Well, not all. I mean, it wasn't like the walls had started to bleed. I have always considered bleeding walls much scarier than ones that are merely on fire.

But she was on to something. I really hate fire. I am, in fact, a bit like Frankenstein: Friends, good. Fire bad.

I think that's why I have such enormous respect for the Lincoln Volunteer Fire Department -- why I have such admiration for firefighters across the state. They know as well as anyone that friendship is good. And house fires? Worse than bad.

Thanks, guys. I really appreciate your dropping by.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on January 6, 2008.)

Americans, as we know, aren’t real good at pinpointing places on maps. As Miss Teen South Carolina said so eloquently last year, “I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, oh, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and uh, I believe that our, I, education like such as, uh, South Africa, and uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, er, should help South Africa. It should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for us.”

Yes, that is the exact quote. I verified it on YouTube.com, and nothing on the Internet is ever wrong.

I was reminded of this answer from last year’s pageant because between Dec. 28 and Jan. 1, my friend Craig Hilliard of Winooski, flew to Central America for a vacation in Costa Rica. His route there was Burlington, Washington, D.C., Phoenix, Philadelphia, Burlington, drive to and from Boston, then fly once more from Burlington to D.C. to Charlotte, N.C., to Costa Rica. Just for the record, that drive to and from Boston was in a snowstorm.

In all fairness, the airline did not send Hilliard to Phoenix because they could not find Costa Rica on a map. They sent him there because the lamination on his passport was starting to peel. Oh, wait — that’s why they sent him to Philadelphia from Phoenix. They sent him to Phoenix from Washington, D.C., because the plane that was supposed to take him from Charlotte to Costa Rica was in some other time zone. And as anyone who has ever looked at a map of Central America knows, the best way to get to Costa Rica from the eastern seaboard is by flying first to Arizona.

In any case, it seems that the Costa Rican security folks are real sticklers when it comes to a laminated passport photo, and the gate agent in Phoenix wouldn’t risk sending Hilliard there because the Lamination Police in Costa Rica might send him to Guantanamo Bay, where he would never be heard from again. Actually, it wouldn’t be that bad: It’s not likely anyone can really find Guantanamo Bay on a map. But the Costa Ricans would, according to the gate agent in Phoenix, definitely deny Hilliard entry into their country. And so even though he had been using this passport to commute frequently between Burlington and Washington, D.C., for work (he is a software consultant for Oracle Applications), it wasn’t good enough for a gate agent in Arizona. Consequently, the airline sent him home to Vermont via Philadelphia ... on the overnight red-eye. He was back at his starting point on Dec. 30.

This, of course, explains why Hilliard detoured to Boston on Dec. 31. Confused? Simple. He went to Boston that day to visit the passport office there, hoping he could somehow finagle a new passport instantly and salvage the remains of his vacation. Didn’t happen — at least not the way he expected. The Boston administrators said they couldn’t possibly issue him a new passport in less than three weeks.

Game over? Not quite. Instead of issuing him a new passport, they put his old one in their antique lamination machine. Yup, they just re-laminated it. And though it wasn’t as good as new, it did get him safely past the Lamination Police in Costa Rica.

Total travel time for Hilliard to reach his destination? Just over four and a half days.

Number of take-offs and landings? Fourteen.

Accumulated frequent flyer miles? Not nearly enough.

Now, this saga is only the start of what could be an ongoing feature, “The Friendly Skies.” Come back next week, when I am going to share with you the tale of my friend Bill Reed and his wife, Susan Walker, of South Burlington. At the same time that Hilliard was struggling to get out of Vermont, Bill and Susan were struggling to get back here. On Jan. 1, they flew from London to New York City. The flight landed at JFK right on time. It was that last 300 miles that were a tad problematic. And while the pilot didn’t need a map, he could have used a working defroster.

Stay tuned!

(This article originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on January 13, 2008.)

Last week I shared with you the lengths to which Winooski's Craig Hilliard went to have a margarita in Costa Rica: Over four and a half days, he saw seven cities and six different airports, took off or landed 14 times, and watched football in airport bars in times zones as far west as Phoenix and as far east as Philadelphia. But it was one heck of a margarita, and the vacation -- though shorter than planned -- was worth the ordeal.

At the same time that Hilliard was trying to escape the Land of the Polar Tomato around New Year's, South Burlington's Bill Reed and his family were trying to return. Reed, a singing teacher here in Vermont and at the Circle in the Square Theatre School in Manhattan, and his wife and younger daughter had just spent a week visiting their older daughter in London. This means that they had all had just about their fill of such cheerful British holiday fare as Christmas pudding: beef, raisins and prunes. (I should note that I am half-Swedish, and the scariest holiday fare ever had to be the lutfisk my Swedish mother once tried to prepare. Basically, she bought cod and aged and softened it until it became jellylike. Trust me: If you ever have a choice between Christmas pudding with beef and raisins or my mother's recipe for fish jelly, go with the pudding.)

The flight from London to New York's JFK Airport landed on time early in the afternoon on Jan. 1. It was the 300 miles separating JFK and Burlington International Airport that proved a little harder to navigate. Literally. Here, essentially, is what happened.

Their flight to Vermont early that evening was almost home when the pilot announced on the intercom that his windshield was coated with ice and the defroster wasn't working. According to Reed he added, "I'm pretty good at what I do, but not so good that I want to land without being able to see out the window." This is, of course, not the sort of thing a passenger wants to hear. It's not as bad as a pilot saying, "I'm pretty good at what I do, but not so good that I can land without a left wing." But it's definitely worse than being informed that someone forgot the pretzels.

The plane returned to JFK where it was warm enough for the window to thaw and the plane to land. There the mechanics tried to fix the defroster. Meanwhile, it was a good thing that no one had forgotten the pretzels because that's what the passengers lived on as they sat in the cabin. Finally, when it was clear the defroster couldn't be fixed, the airline moved everyone to a second plane, and they set off for Vermont sometime around midnight.

This time as they descended, the defroster worked like a dream. Unfortunately, the pilot told them that the folks in the air traffic control tower had gone home -- not an unreasonable thing to do in the middle of the night. And so, once again, they were returning to JFK. "In my entire career," the pilot said, "I have never before flown to a city twice and turned around twice."

The airline put the passengers up at an airport hotel, and everyone fell into their beds about 3 in the morning. The next day, the airline decided that the only sure way to fly them to Burlington ... was to drive them. They announced they were sending the folks home by bus ... which broke down. I am not kidding. The bus broke down.

Fortunately, it broke down on the way to JFK, and so -- though sleep-deprived and nearly delirious -- Reed rented a car and drove that last 300 miles, arriving back in South Burlington a mere 30 hours after arriving at JFK.

Reed notes that everyone at the airline did their best to put a good face on the nightmare. "Our stewardess was about 23, and even though she was clearly dying inside, she was always a complete professional," he says. "It was sort of like in the theater when the act doesn't show and the master of ceremonies has to tap dance."

By the time Reed's family returned home from their vacation, there was nothing they wanted more than ... a vacation. Or, at the very least, Craig Hilliard's margarita.

(This column originally ran in the Burlington Free Press on January 20, 2008.)

Last Saturday night my brother and I held a surprise 80th birthday party for our father in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. This meant there were about 40 people present who had firsthand recollections of the Great Depression, the Second World War, and television before the writers' strike. They shared with me moving stories of what it was like when a person could turn on the television and there would be more to watch than "America's Hungriest Super Model."

We held the gala at the country club where my father plays golf, and so when he arrived at the club around 6 o'clock for what he thought was going to be a light dinner before bridge, all of his family and friends were lined up on the carpeted stairs like it was the very end of the movie, "Titanic," and Rose is being reunited with Jack. I am happy to report that the surprise did not, as one of his poker buddies warned me might happen, kill him. "You wait," this fellow said warily as we waited for the guest of honor to arrive, "Tomorrow you're going to be sitting beside your dad in the hospital." I reassured him that my brother and I knew what we were doing: Two days earlier our father's pacemaker had been checked out by his cardiologist.

What I found especially impressive was that more than three dozen of my dad's friends and neighbors managed to keep the surprise party a complete secret for nearly three months -- and these are people who my father sees all the time and who don't have a lot to talk about other than doctor's appointments and medical procedures. (And just for the record, there is no medical procedure they do not talk about. No orifice is sacred when you hit 80.)

Actually, one of the things that I love about my dad's friends is that most of them are pretty astonishing raconteurs; most of them are very funny and very wise. The theme of the party was "Handicap: 80," which really might be my dad's golf handicap someday. But that was, in some ways, exactly the point. It would take more than an 80 handicap to keep my dad and his friends off the golf course. The point, in my dad's case, isn't precisely the score -- though he is competitive and wants to play well. The point is simply to be out on the links three days a week.

As someone much wiser than I once said, "People do not stop playing because they grow old. People grow old because they stop playing."

And so the day after my dad's party, my brother and my nephew and I went to play golf with him. I have never played golf. When I was a teenager, I caddied. And whenever I visit my father, we go to the driving range and hit a few buckets of balls. But until last Sunday I had never played an official round. Well, the golf was at least as much fun as the party, especially since I discovered that I can use a three-wood to launch a golf ball like a mortar over four-story condominiums into parking lots. It was awesome, and by the fifth hole, I wasn't even bothering to aim down the fairway because it didn't matter: The golf ball was going to find pavement. I could have used a putter and the ball would have wound up bouncing off somebody's car.

But I did appreciate the game -- and I loved driving the golf cart. I would have loved driving it even more if my dad had let me try to pull some 360s in the sand traps, but apparently that's not done. Still, I could tell that I had made my dad very happy by playing golf with him, though for reasons I can't completely understand he wanted us to go to the driving range the next day instead of returning to the golf course.

I think next year we'll have to do this again: Party, golf, the whole deal. If I spend a little more time on my short game, I might be able to get my handicap to match my dad's age.

In the meantime, happy birthday, Dad!

(This column originally ran in the Burlington Free Press on January 27, 2008.)