WORK IN PROGRESS : On Soot Patrol : Chimney sweep provides an inside look at his down-and-dirty craft. Or, with a vacuum cleaner at his side, from the bottom up.

Chimney sweeps are a big draw. People are charmed by the man on the roof poking things down a chimney in a rather macho ritual. Those who perform the craft enjoy folk hero status, like blacksmiths and locomotive engineers.

That is, some of them do.

Lee Cannaday doesn’t encourage that sort of spotlighting. Asked if he entered the trade for its romance, he makes a derisive nasal sound followed by a long pause.

Finally, he drawls: “I don’t like the work, personally. It’s too dirty.”

Then, the clincher: “Besides, a lot of chimney cleaners die of rectal cancer.”

So much for romance. The afternoon is like that. Instead of a Poppins-esque rooftop experience, time on the job is filled with soot and Woody Allenisms.

For the most part, Cannaday doesn’t talk. But this owes, in part, to his location: inside fireplaces.

Arriving at a home that has a needy chimney, he parks his ’73 Ford pickup, hauls out an extension ladder and heads for the roof of the house. He’ll take a chimney check before actually knocking on the front door--to know upfront whether there’s enough soot to justify his immersion.

Having satisfied himself that this is the case, he greets his customer and unloads a giant industrial vacuum and a set of blackened brushes. He brings the vac into the living room, positions it near the fireplace and drapes the fireplace opening with cloth. Under the folds of the cloth he places a hose. Then he hits the on switch and returns to the roof.

Poised atop the chimney, the 6-foot-6 Cannaday makes an arresting figure, one that would be enhanced by a traditional top hat and tail coat. But his costume is a blue jumpsuit and once-white Nikes.

Twelve years ago, new to the trade, he wore a top hat. “Somebody stole it out of my truck,” he said, “and it wasn’t worth replacing.”

He allows that there are sweeps whose outfits are more appealing. And some are more willing to play to an audience.

“There’s one guy that comes out and sings, ‘Chim, Chim, Chirree’ and charges you 20 bucks extra, because he knows how to sing and dance. But do you want entertainment, or do you want a job done?”

John McGraw, keeper of the chimney, made his choice. He first called Lee’s Chimney Cleaning a year ago, and after inspection, was told that his chimney wasn’t dirty enough.

This happens in about half of Cannaday’s first-time calls. He adheres to what he calls the quarter-inch rule. Unless there is an average of a quarter-inch of creosote throughout a chimney or evidence of shiny, tar-like creosote from low-smoldering fires, he tells customers to wait.

“That way, I don’t have to clean a lot of chimneys,” he says laconically.

Cannaday says it takes the combustion of five cords of wood to warrant fireplace cleaning, an amount Southern Californians might spend decades on. “How many people burn a cord a year?” he asks. “It’s just an occasional thing.”

Smokey fireplaces are the source of most of his calls. But this usually indicates a clogged screen, damp wood or an overload of ashes keeping oxygen from the fire--not soot buildup.

“Some guys pump it up,” he said. “They keep calling people back and saying, ‘It’s time to get your chimney cleaned.’ One lady called me up yesterday (who) had hers cleaned three times in five years. If you don’t know what to look for, you’re at the mercy of the guy that performs the service.”

He proceeds to swab down the “stack,” as chimneys are known in the trade. Top-down brushing is completed, from the rooftop, in a few minutes. Bottom-up cleaning, from the fireplace within the house, is the challenge.

Cannaday leans into the fireplace, using a trouble light and a wire brush, then captures the fallout with the vacuum hose. He contorts his body to reach every surface of the chimney’s interior.

Over the scream of the vacuum, he points out the importance of reaching the smoke shelf behind the firebox. Otherwise, “you don’t get a good clean.” Soon his entire upper body disappears, and the vacuum’s pitch rises as it gobbles hidden debris.

Emerging, Cannaday vacuums his hair and wipes his forehead with a sooty glove, leaving a dark trail. He then turns the vacuum hose on the firebox and sucks up its leftover ashes. Then, silence: It’s over.

He collects $35 for the job, his one-story, off-season rate. During the winter he normally charges $45--held at $35 last winter, however, “because it was a recession year.”

Cannaday thought of selling his business last year and surviving on his other enterprise--Squeez-ums Ojai Orange Juice. Then the freeze came to the fields, and chimneys had a renewed appeal to him. So he continues his dual enterprises--mornings processing fruit into juice, afternoons vacuuming soot.

He’s undecided about the future except for one thing: It will not involve working for others.

He’s tried it. Four years in the Air Force, including a tour in Vietnam, and a short stint as an orderly at St. Joseph’s Convalescent Hospital in Ojai.

In between, he earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology at Cal State Northridge. He began a master’s program in linguistics, studying for a year in Taiwan.

The answer to the question of whether he has plans to use these studies in a career is brief and enigmatic: “No.”

Then, after the pause, “I’m not a very goal-oriented person.”

Cannaday came from Georgia, the middle son of three. His father was a roofer, and the family moved a lot. He spent his teen-age years in Topanga Canyon during the height of its hippie influx. Still, he was not heavily influenced. “I’ve never been a joiner,” he said.

He lives in Meiners Oaks with his wife, Barbara, a masseuse, and their three children.

He’s unworried about the future, uncertainties aside. “I’m sort of a here-and-now person,” he said. “Most people talk to themselves in their minds. If I’m not reading, I watch the sky or listen to the birds. I never have that internal dialogue, and I never worry about anything.”