When I was much younger and had just become a magazine writer, a gentleman named Fremont Lobbestael called me on the phone. He was from Ann Arbor, Mich., and he worked as a salesman for the Hutzel Plumbing and Heating Co.
That company has been around since 1857. I can still hear his voice. It was part Sunday-school teacher, part delighted child. I sat up and listened. He called to give me some tips about steam heating and it came at a good time because I was working on a book I called “The Lost Art of Steam Heating.” I had been poring over old heating texts for years and thought I had most of it figured out, but that was a young man’s arrogance. I know now as an old man that the learning never stops and that was a lesson Fremont was about to teach me.