The old saying about the weather in Iowa: "if you don't like it, stick around for 15 minutes -- it'll change," has been true this past week, hasn't it? On Sat. Oct. 6, it was pushing 90º and I was sweating profusely mowing my lawn. Since then, it's been a rarity to see the sun and my sump pump has been running on a regular basis, trickling down my driveway to the street every 15 minutes or so.

Yes, the gloomy fall has arrived, rain and rain and rain. If we get the predicted sunshine this weekend, I'd wear sunglasses and ear protection if you plan on venturing outdoors. Your eyes will need to adjust to the brightness and it will be difficult to hear over the whine of lawnmowers trying to catch up with two weeks of growth.

The dark, rainy and gloomy weather has sapped much of my energy, and even without the extra hour of sleep (Standard Time returns on Nov. 4 now, so set your clocks back on Sat. Nov. 3) it's become a struggle to get out of bed. The weather certainly hasn't helped this situation.

Have you run your furnace yet? I imagine there are some well-insulated folks that haven't, but we have run ours. I read yesterday that crude oil prices are once again rising, due to speculation of increased demand and no increase in production. Later in the story comes the punch line that home heating costs will likely increase as well. The next story was about economists worried that increased gasoline and home heating costs will cut into consumer spending, which comprises two-thirds of total economic activity. Imagine that, economists that can do math! More money spent on gasoline and heating your home equals less money to be spent on something else. Brilliant!

Keeping the house warm in the winter has always ranked pretty high on the priority list, so the economic cards will fall where they may. We pretty much take our furnaces and warm homes for granted until something goes wrong with them, as is the case with many things today. Then it's crisis mode full bore until we are back warm and toasty.

On of my favorite movies is "A Christmas Story," made in the mid 1980s based on the short stories of Jean Shepherd. It gets run heavily at Christmastime and stars Peter Billingsley as the kid that wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. You've probably seen it, but if you haven't, I highly recommend it. Darren McGavin plays the boy's father and spends significant time in the basement fighting the coal furnace.

I believe that furnace fighting is a right of passage into manhood, one that is passed from father to son. Forty years ago, when I was a small child growing up in a house built in the early 1920s, we had a gravity fed fuel oil furnace, no ductwork and no forced air fans moving the heat, only the laws of nature (and the registers cut in the upstairs floor) brought the heat to us. Standing on the grate remains a warm childhood memory. Later, the furnace was replaced with a forced air natural gas model with a thermostat, giving my elderly parents something else to fight about.

My cousin had one of the old coal furnaces and his father fought many a klinker. We had it easy. The worst that could happen is that we would run out of fuel oil.

When my wife and I purchased our first home, it had a furnace that converted from coal to fuel oil. In the years we lived there, I got to know that furnace much better than I would like to have. I can relate to the Darren McGavin character's epic battles against the furnace. One of the proudest moments of my adult life was saving enough money to have that behemoth removed and replaced by a high efficiency propane model. The person who installed the new furnace had to use a cutting torch to cut the huge old furnace out. It was a happy time.

With the new furnaces, it's usually a circuit board or sensor that needs to be replaced, so, unless you have a HVAC degree, you won't get to know the joy of furnace fighting.

That's a good thing, but I'm glad I fought like my father before me.

As always, I welcome your comments. You can reach me by email at tstangl@lemarscomm.net, telephone 712-546-7031, x40 or toll free 1-800-728-0066 x40.

Thanks for reading, I'll keep in touch. Feel free to do the same.