This is a Glassbox Media Podcast.

When I was a kid, and even as a young adult, I had no fear of heights.

I was always climbing trees, climbing all over the roof of our house, never had a second

thought or any fear about it.

Then when I was 30, something happened that changed that.

We were living in Maine.

It was my wife, Jeannie, and our two kids.

Our son, David, was eight years old, and our daughter, Brienne, was five.

We lived in a house that had a fireplace, and the chimney was equipped with this interesting

device.

You know, chimneys get soot and stuff that builds up inside, and they need to be cleaned

out pretty regularly.

If you don't do that, it can be dangerous because the residue can actually catch on fire.

And it wasn't unusual to hear about chimney fires, sometimes when this happened.

But this chimney was equipped with this thing that had a handle at the bottom, down in

the basement.

And there was a cable that was inside the chimney, and it went all the way up to the top.

And attached to the cable was this stiff wire brush.

So you could crank that handle around, and the brush would travel up the chimney, brushing

away all of that gunk that had built up, and then at the top it's supposed to reverse

direction and come back down.

And most of the time it worked pretty well.

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