WEST VIRGINIA — Kevin Hensley, a longtime opponent of leaving exterior doors open for any reason, spent 23 minutes Wednesday discussing firewood with a neighbor while allowing the household’s purchased heat to leave at its own pace.
The conversation began when Hensley opened the front door to answer a simple question.
It expanded to include three chainsaws, a dead oak, the price of a cord, and an individual who apparently did not know how to stack anything.
Behind him, the furnace activated.
Inside, his wife, Melissa, watched a curtain begin moving toward the porch.
“He can hear that door open from the garage when the girls do it,” she said. “Apparently his hearing shuts off when somebody mentions a wood splitter.”
Hensley’s usual household policy requires anyone entering or leaving to complete the process without standing around “deciding where they live.”
On Wednesday, he stood with one foot inside and one foot outside while explaining why a neighbor’s trailer tires were wearing unevenly.
Melissa asked him to either invite the man in or step onto the porch.
“We’re about done,” Kevin replied.
They had not yet reached the part about the trailer lights.
By the seventeenth minute, the thermostat had dropped two degrees and the neighbor had removed his jacket.
“He said it felt pretty good right there,” Melissa confirmed. “I bet it did. We were paying for it.”
The discussion eventually returned to firewood, with both men agreeing that heating costs were getting ridiculous.
Melissa approached the doorway.
Kevin interpreted her presence as an opportunity to ask whether she remembered the name of the fellow with the red tractor.
She remembered how to close the door.
At press time, Hensley had returned to his recliner and asked why the house felt cold.
The Holler Herald — West Virginia’s Least Reliable News Source.
