Coal Hills and the Work of Keeping Warm

We had a furnace that burned coal for fuel. Daddy would take Bob and Bernie and go to a huge industrial coal yard to get the coal. They would weigh Daddy’s car and trailer before they loaded the coal and then weigh it again after loading; subtracting the original weight to get the weight of the coal. There were mountains of coal everywhere, forming sharp peaks. While Daddy filled the trailer with a huge coal shovel, Bernie and Bob would climb these hills of coal and slide down, getting their clothes just black and, of course, Mom would be furious when they got home. When they got the coal home, Daddy had to shovel it into the coal bin through a small window in the basement. He broke that window many times in the process. The coal burned down until nothing was left but the cinders and ashes. Daddy had a never-ending job tending to the furnace. It had to be banked every day and every night, and the cinders and ashes had to be raked and shoveled out of the pit and then carried outside. We used to make cinder plants. First we had to find a good cinder that had a point. Then we would put iodine on it and it would actually grow and make brilliant iridescent multi-colored stalagmites.