At a Merrie Sweepe Chimney Service, Inc., they do just about everything your chimney needs. From cleaning to rebuilding to pest control, Bob Warner, 62, says they’re "in the business of helping to make people’s homes safer through more enjoyment and effective service from their heating service."

The Rye resident, who likes the smell of coffee more than the taste, started the Greenland chimney sweep and masonry company as a side job before the service took off.

Warner still sometimes wears the old-fashioned top hat and tails on the job, fitting his slogan, "modern technology, traditional service since 1983." Since founding the chimney business with his wife Merrie (look familiar?) more than 20 years ago, this father, minister, former school teacher and business owner has been dancing on the rooftops, literally, all over the Seacoast. (http://www.amerriesweepe.com/)

ABBIE SMESTAD: How long have you been a chimney sweep?

BOB WARNER: Well, I’d like to say that I’m a business owner in the chimney business since 1983. I was teaching school in the Rye school system, teaching fifth grade at that time, and started out doing this as something on the side because a lot of teachers don’t make enough money to make ends meet the way they’d like to. So this was supposed to be something done summers and weekends, and it just took off.

ABBIE: And you do a lot of the stuff still yourself right?

BOB: Yeah, I do a lot of the installations. Woodstoves, Pre-Fab chimneys and fireplaces. I would say two-thirds of my time is spent doing estimates and meeting customers and setting up jobs. Supervising the business. The nice thing is I have a wonderful staff, really smart, experienced people.

ABBIE: How does one become a chimney sweep?

BOB: That’s really a good question. When I started, I ended up reading a manual that was available nationally, so I read that. Then I sort of hired myself out to another chimney company up in Rockport, Maine, and I actually paid them for two or three days to go work with them. And then I went and did some chimney cleaning for a couple of my friends, and that wasn’t too much of a disaster. You have to really be careful with soot and things going around. So I was pretty much self-taught with just that little extra. Now there’s a national organization, Chimney Safety Institute of America (CSIA) and it has a national headquarters out in Indiana and it runs a sweep training school all year round.

ABBIE: How long does it take to actually clean a chimney?

BOB: Well if you’re running a crew of one person, you figure about an hour and a half, and if it’s two - we try to run two most of the time - I figure about an hour. And then you can find all sorts of complications, whether it’s a big blockage or collapsed brickwork, or some kid’s ball has gone down the chimney from playing outside, or a duck.

ABBIE: Can you actually go into a chimney; can you slide down a chimney?

BOB: No.

ABBIE: So you haven’t had anyone get stuck in one.

BOB: No. Sometimes there’ll be a really big chimney that we need to do some repair in and we’ll hang a ladder from the side and someone will climb down in. A lot of these are older chimneys. Although there are some great big ones, new ones that are built and we sort of take off the top of them and actually climb down in and we’ll do the repair by hand. Most of the time though, the crew size is too small. In England, one of the famous birthplaces of chimney sweeping, they used to send "climbing boys" up inside the chimney with brushes and just their clothes. It was just a horrendous situation because these boys were developing cancer, various kinds of skin cancer and lung cancer ... and that was outlawed a long time ago.

ABBIE: Have you ever seen Santa in a chimney?

BOB: I’ve never seen him in a chimney, but I have a picture of me and Santa Clause on the top of Rockingham House Condominiums, and I’m pointing out to him that I’m getting (the chimney) clean.

ABBIE: Have you ever fallen off a roof?

BOB: I never have ... I’ve taken little 3- or 4-foot tumbles where I just sort of skinned my arms or knees or something. Not so much from the roof to the ground but maybe from one part of the roof to another. But I’m not a cowboy, and I’m really careful, and we stress safety. We don’t want people being crazy, and I think that’s one of the reasons I’ve survived. (Laughing) Whenever I talk about safety, my wife usually puts her fingers in her ears and goes, "La la la la, I don’t want to hear about it!"

ABBIE: Oh, I bet.

BOB: Yeah. But no, generally we don’t fall, and we don’t plan to. And we have really good equipment, we never spare any expense on the equipment, and by being thoughtful and not rushing too much, we have a really low record of any kinds of accidents or problems. I’ve had things where my ladder has fallen over while I was up on the roof and gotten stuck and had to call for help ... occasionally things like that will happen. It’s kind of embarrassing.

ABBIE: Ever found anything weird in a chimney before?

BOB: We’ve found a couple of wood geese or ducks, found some old bottles, dolls, Frisbees, balls ... never found any skeletons, never any old messages or money ... we always keep looking for money.

ABBIE: Some of that’s pretty random.

BOB: Lots of raccoons or squirrels, alive usually, and we have to chase them out from time to time. The raccoons mostly, I have a knack that I teach my guys down at the fireplace level. Usually in fireplaces, they like to come down to this little shelf behind the damper, that’s a great place to have their families, it’s usually females. And they hold-up in there and they have their litters and stay in there until the babies are big enough to come out on their own. Of course, they make noise and make a lot of mess and smell, and people don’t want them there. So we, without opening the damper and risking having them bite you or claw at you, start making lots of noise, banging on the damper with a hammer and yelling blood-curtling things like we’re Indians, making silly fools out of ourselves. It scares the living daylights out of the mama raccoon, and hopefully it overcomes her protective sense for the babies and then she often will get scared and go out.

ABBIE: And what about the little baby ones?

BOB: Well, we take the babies out and put them in a box and try to put them up in a high place so that dogs can’t get to them and the mom will come back and get them usually in the nighttime. The babies wouldn’t survive without the mom.

ABBIE: So people call you and have you remove birds’ nests and animals and stuff like that?

BOB: Sometimes they won’t know that’s what they have, they may call and say you know, "I’ve got smoke coming back into the house" or "for some reason, my fireplace isn’t drafting right." Or maybe an oil company will call us and we’ll come out and find out that a nest is blocking it, or an animal itself sometimes.

ABBIE: Do you ever dance on the rooftops like all the chimney sweeps in "Mary Poppins"?

BOB: Well that’s an interesting question. Not usually, but I can remember when my son was in nursery school, they needed to have their chimney cleaned. So I came and got into my top hat and tails, and got up on the roof and I made up a song that I would sing to them about chimney sweeps and it was to some familiar tune, I forget what it was ... probably an old Peter, Paul and Mary tune or something. And then I made up the words to sing to the kids while standing on the rooftop and did a little dance and they would all come out. ... I love kids a lot, and I enjoy entertaining. ...

ABBIE: Are you usually covered in the black soot?

BOB: No actually, it’s interesting, there are times when it happens but usually the sort of work I do, I don’t get all that dirty. But when people are first learning, there’s a tendency to get covered a lot more. Mostly after a while you learn how to work smart.

ABBIE: How many times do you have to do laundry a week?

BOB: We have a washer and dryer here for washing the drop cloths primarily. I myself don’t get so dirty that I have to wash my clothes separately, but sometimes the sweeps will come in and wash them here because their wives or significant others won’t let them do the wash at home. Or because they just want to get it done here and not have to fret about taking things home.

ABBIE: Have you ever put the soot under your eyes like a football player, like eye-black?

BOB: No, nope. I’ve never done that. Although I was hired by the father of a bride, he called me from New York City, and asked if I would go to his daughter’s wedding in Portsmouth and appear there in top hat and tails, with a brush and rod, and would bless the wedding. Chimney sweeps are supposed to be good luck. So in England, and in Germany to some extent too, they are often called upon to appear at momentous occasions, particularly weddings as a token of good luck. And the good luck idea, I guess, is if you’re a chimney sweep and you manage to survive with all the risks, then you must lead a charmed life, and by somehow touching other people, you can have that rub off on them ... but anyhow, I remember I didn’t have any black and I grabbed some ashes out of my fireplace and put them on my face to make it look like I was dirty.

ABBIE: Do you sweep all different kinds of chimneys? Is it more expensive for some than others?

BOB: We pretty much use a flat rate ... occasionally we have some little disclaimers in case there’s something really complicated, like if there’s a major blockage, which takes some extra time, but a tall chimney doesn’t cost more than a short chimney.

ABBIE: Do the old-fashioned top hat and tails help you do a better job?

BOB: Um, I think ... when I was originally starting the business I wore it all the time. I didn’t wear the tails but I wore the top hat, and I thought that was good advertising so people would see it and then stop me and ask me who I was and get my name or look at the truck. And I actually used to tell people, particularly kids, that it was my lucky hat and that if I was wearing it then I would never fall. And that actually, if I ever did start to fall, it would allow me to fly. And I can remember a time when I had left my hat at somebody’s house down in Hampton and I had to go to Dover my first job the next day. And so then I was going up on the roof without my top hat, and I was nervous as a dickens. It really bothered me and I felt naked, besides the fact that I don’t have much hair (rubs his bald head). I’d been telling people it was my good-luck hat, and it was so much a part of my persona that without it, I said, "There’s something wrong, I don’t like this idea."

ABBIE: Do you take any safety precautions about inhaling the soot and stuff like that?

BOB: Yeah, that’s a really good question. We wear respirators when we’re going to be in particularly confined quarters and think we’re going to be breathing soot. Sometimes that means at the top of a chimney when we’re brushing and stuff’s coming up in our faces. But everyone has to have a respirator and have it available, and they make up their own minds about when to wear it. Soot from a chimney has a lot of things in common with some of the things in cigarettes, and that’s one of the reasons we charge what we do, is because it’s risky if we don’t take care of ourselves.

ABBIE: Have you ever blown your stack?

BOB: (Laughing.) You mean like, gotten angry? Certainly in any kind of service business, with customers, you get angry with people sometimes. But if anything, part of my nature is to be very conciliatory and to keep my cool most of the time. And I can’t really remember any time that I’ve ever really blown my stack. What’s he doing back there? (Bob Y. is shaking his head from behind Bob’s back. Although Lori vouches that in 10 years, she has never seen him get real mad, Bob Y. says he’s seen it once with a staff person, but never with a customer.) There are times when I’ve even been told by my men that I’m too nice. They’ll say, "Warner, you’ve got to kick ass in there!"