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Colder temperatures, mixed precipitation, wind possible as Thanksgiving approaches

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Today in History: Monday, Nov. 21

<p>An old image pops into my mind whenever I check my thermostat, which isn&#8217;t very often.</p><p>Sixty or 70 years ago I thought it was great entertainment to watch a begrimed man stand in the raised bed of a coal delivery truck, nudging and shoveling a ton or more of anthracite onto a chute as it clattered noisily down toward the coal bin under the front porch.</p><p>That guy was the god of black gold. Sometimes I thought about growing up to be just like him, dirty as heck but fearless in his world on high.</p><p>Looking back, though, I think I probably should have heroized my parents. They didn&#8217;t climb up on the truck, but they had to be daily tenders of the flames that kept us warm and fed.</p><p>We had a massive black cooking stove in our kitchen. On one side was the compartment that held the ever-burning fire, without which our mom wouldn&#8217;t have been able to prepare cakes or roasts or even make coffee.</p><p>The fire didn&#8217;t just happen. You had to make it, watch it and build it up or cut it down, depending on need. You couldn&#8217;t turn a dial. There were no dials.</p><p>Next to the stove stood the coal scuttle, a big pail with a handle and pouring spout. When you needed more fire, you&#8217;d take another implement, a small one, and painstakingly lift one of the round lids from over the fire bed. Then you&#8217;d pour some coal in, but not too much, and replace the lid. To stir the fire up, there was a long iron poker.</p><p>Of course, when coal burns it turns to ash. So there was a handle-like implement you&#8217;d insert into a slot to shake the fire bed down a bit, causing the ash to fall into a metal drawer, which from time to time you&#8217;d take out and empty. Most homes had piles of ashes out back, useful for throwing onto icy sidewalks.</p><p>Cooking? Good luck! Baking a cake in the oven of a coal stove was like trying to land a plane with the instruments gone at an airport that hasn&#8217;t paid its light bill. But bake Mom did.</p><p>By the way, there was yet another instrument to hold a piece of bread over the fire so you could make toast. That was the closest to cooking I was allowed to do.</p><p>The real Goliath was downstairs, though. An anthracite coal furnace for heating the house was an enormous chamber with a big door in front. Dad would haul shovels full of coal from the bin and toss them into the furnace, where they would crackle and roar and produce many times as much ash as the cook stove upstairs.</p><p>At night the fire had to be banked to keep it alive and turning out enough heat that you didn&#8217;t freeze in your bedrooms. Then in the morning it could be built up a bit. Our original heat circulation system was just a big yard-square grating in the floor between the living room and dining room, though wonderful for standing on when you came in on a snowy day.</p><p>I can&#8217;t forget the guy who stood on high in his truck. I also can&#8217;t forget the folks who heated the house and cooked food for the young &#8217;uns like me with technology that was closer to the 1700s than to our year of 2016.</p><p>The warmest of thanks to all of you.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Remember When </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/web1_TOM_MOONEY-3.jpg</photo0><caption0>Remember When </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Tom Mooney</p><p>Remember When</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Tom Mooney is a Times Leader history columnist. Reach him at tommooney42@gmail.com.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Remember When: A warm and ashy thank you as the weather begins to turn