Smokin'

I came upstairs from the basement the other day and I thought I caught a whiff of smoke. The same thing happened the next day. One of my son's friends left a cigar wrapper in the car the other day, so I asked my son if he had been smoking. I didn't specify what. He denied it. Now the light over the basement stair burns out. It's one of those circular fluorescents. so I stop by Freddies (the local mega-mart) to pick one up. 30 Watts, 3000 Lumens, $5, and it comes in one of those sealed until dooms-day plastic packages, the ones you need a chainsaw to open, or at least at stout pair of scissors.

I open up the fixture, and look what I find:

Notice the bar across the center of the fixture. Notice the nice round hook at the right end of the bar. Notice the melted stub at the left end of the bar. As it's last act in this house, the bulb had gotten hot enough to melt the hook into oblivion. It even put a dent in the cover.

It's kind of hard to see in this picture, but it's a slightly darker spot around the 4 o'clock position.

Of course, this doesn't prove Junior wasn't smoking, but at it does provide an alternate theory for the whiffs of smoke I detected.

Update February 2017 replaced missing pictures.