3 Hoggs and a Wolfe

Dan Wolfe tightened his coat up to the top button against the drizzle and calmed the churning in his stomach as he contemplated the house before him. He wasn’t looking forward to this. In the last six months he had twice visited his childhood friends houses neither visit went well for him.. As the town’s only building inspector he wasn’t generally greeted friendly, but in this case he was sure the welcome he would receive was anything but. The Hoggs weren’t a family renowned for letting go of grudges.



Wolfe remembered the first incident, with the youngest of the three children. He fancied himself a builder and constructed his house of the new system of straw bales. Wolfe didn’t have anything against this ages old building material, and in fact supported any attempt for natural building material constructions, provided that they did the building up to code. But because of their childhood friendship, Joniour Hogg didn’t think they would apply to him. Always the more rambunctious of the children he had a past for dodgy practises and this case was no different. In fact he hadn’t done anything right. He didn’t bother with the age old wisdom of running bonds and instead opted to just stack the bails on top of each other, His moisture barriers consisted of cheap plastic cover and he didn’t even bother to raise the bales off the ground, figuring to somehow replace the bails as they rotted away. To add to the trouble, Joniour quickly ran out of money and cut costs on the rendering, leaving a weak covering for the already rotting straw.



These and other factors contributed to the problem when Wolfe came to inspect the property. He only had to lean against a wall for the whole construction to come down. Joniour Hogg had blamed Wolfe for the incident, and the Hogg family never let him forget.



The second incident happened six months later, and for a much older building. Middling Hogg was a fairly bright fellow for all things other than construction. The building he bought was an old weather board three bedroom house that had seen better days, and Middling bought it from a retired widow for a song. His thoughts were to renovate the building and sell it for three times the price he bought it. It was a good plan, and it may have worked had he bothered to consult a builder. Now as I said, he was a fairly bright fellow but he made two major mistakes with his renovations, the first was to hire his now homeless little brother to help in the construction and the second was to buy some cheap timber from Joniour, who said he had bought it off guy he met at the pub. By the time that Wolfe visit to assess the renovations, the termites that had infested the wood bought from the pub had spread throughout the house. The Hogg brothers did not like the deconstruction order that Wolfe had issued a condemned order on the house and took Wolfe to court over that incident. Wolfe won and the two Hogg siblings had been arrested when it came to light that the wood turned out to have been stolen from a quarantine station by a light fingered Joniour. The Hogg brothers had gotten off light, and traded for a smaller sentence with information they had on the local black market, and were put away for the next two years.



And now Wolfe stood in front of the eldest Hogg brother, and his oldest friend. Eldar wasn’t like the other Hogg siblings. He decided early in life that the only way to do things was the correct way and when it came time for him to build; he paid for a builder to build. A cook by trade, he didn’t have the skills or inclination for construction, and decided the easiest way was to hire a professional for the building.



Wolfe had no problems with the house once it was constructed and felt that this helped mend things with the Hogg’s. This time was different. Jonuior had been released from jail, and paid for his room in Eldar’s house by helping his brother with renovations in the kitchen. This included the construction of a huge fireplace and a chimney to match. Always considering natural alternatives, the chimney was to be constructed from mud bricks made by Joniour.



Wolfe had to admit, the large chimney was impressive. Looming far over the house itself, it was constructed of Mud Bricks, made from the local clay that ran in the area, as well as the sand from the river and, suspected Wolfe, straw from a certain building that he had previously inspected with disastrous results. Wolfe approved of Mud Bricks, while not a stable as their kiln fired likeness; they no less had a sturdiness to them that appealed to his sense of structure.



Swallowing his feelings Wolfe approached the house. Hoping that his welcome would not be as bad as he anticipated. After he knocked twice he was certain he heard movement inside and called out, receiving no answer and felt a small amount of relief. He at least wouldn’t bear the brunt of his anger today. Instead he decided to do what he had come to do, inspect the new chimney. Since it was a mostly outside construction, he didn’t really need to go inside.



He headed around the back yard towards the large mud brick chimney sticking high into the sky, and found a ladder leaning against the house nearby. Eldar, wherever he was had been expecting him at least, and ensured that he could access the chimney for the inspection. He did his ground checks first and began to ascend to the roof.

As he reached the top of the roof and made his way towards the chimney, he heard a thump and quickly turned around and found the ladder had fallen. At first he was panicky, expecting that Joniour had set a trap, but soon realised that it was just the wind and rain that made the ladder fall, and not some nefarious revenge plan. And he had a safe way to get down. Wolfe noticed that the chimney had what they called a sweep release. An extra compartment for Chimney Sweeps who became trapped. All you had to do was find the appropriate level and the chimney crevice expanded slightly to allow a man even the size of Wolfe to slide down.



It was about half way down when he began to suspect he was trouble. The chimney was becoming increasingly hot and the sweep release only allowed a one way access. He yelled, hoping that it meant that Eldar had arrived home, but again he received no answer. With rising panic he decides to continue down the Sweeps release, hoping that as he reached the bottom he could somehow avoid the fire underneath.



Then, just as he could feel the heat of the flame liking his feet he heard a yell and a yank on his legs, and he fell the remain two meters landing in a giant pot of boiling water. The last sight he had seen was a horrified Eldar with the white cords of an iPod in his ears, watching as Wolfe was consumed in the steaming waters of his soup.



Wolfe Survived. Once Eldar had seen that it was Wolfe, and not the burglar he first thought, he emptied the pot and called the ambulance. Wolfe didn’t press charges, he still felt guilty over the brothers houses, though he found out that it was Eldar who tipped off the police about the stolen wood.







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