Growing up in rural Pennsylvania in the 1950’s, we had a coal stove to heat our house. The stove squatted prominently in our basement. Swathed in insulation, it was about the size of an oil barrel. The top half had a metal door that opened into the firebox. A series of grates separated the firebox from the ash collection point below. Every few hours we needed to shake some handles to sift the ashes to the collection area, to ensure a good air flow to the fire. From the outside of the swathed stove ran a maze of pipes, gauges, and other esoteric paraphernalia (inexplicable and wondrous to my young mind, at least.)
Most of the pipes had to do with moving water past the firebox, so it could be heated, and then sending steam out to radiators in various rooms of the house. The radiators themselves stood about four feet high and ranged from several inches to about a foot and a half wide, and consisted of anywhere from three to six segments. The more segments, the more heat that radiator would provide. A pipe about an inch and a half in diameter led to each radiator. Each radiator in turn had a valve on the end, presumably to drain water from the radiator, but which I don’t recall ever using.
By opening and closing the vent on the firebox we could adjust the airflow through the fire, and thus the heat. Open the vent, let in lots of air and the fire burned hotter and faster. Close the vent, less air, and the fire would burn lower and slower, such as for overnight or when we would not be able to check it for a while. Since it was such a hassle to constantly go up and down the stairs to adjust the vent, my father drilled a dime-sized hole in the floor near the doorway between the living room and the bedroom. He ran a small string through the hole and attached it to the vent. By jiggling the string from upstairs, we could adjust the vent. What a great labor-saving device! There was also a small section of the floor near the string where the floorboards could be removed. This would open up an area about 2 x 2 ft that could serve as a vent to let the warmer air from near the furnace rise into the living room. On at least one occasion the floor boards slipped out of place as I ran across, and I fell partially into the resulting hole. As my mother asked "Did your foot go down the hole?" I dutifully checked and replied "No, it’s still here."
The question would often be asked: "How many radiators are hot?" Feeling the different segments of the radiators and seeing how many were hot would give us an idea of whether or not the fire needed to be adjusted. The radiators also served as a makeshift laundry dryer. When inclement weather prevented my mother from hanging the wash on the line, we’d drape it over the radiators to dry. With a whole family of wash to tend to, we were constantly seeing which items were dry, and replacing them with damp items. It was also a nice treat on cold mornings to hang our clothes over the radiator while we got ready for school, then slipping on the toasty warm items at the last minute.
In addition to providing heat, on several occasions the furnace was pressed into service as a makeshift stove. When the electric power went out, our electric stove was useless. My mother would make soup, hotdogs, or toasted sandwiches in the firebox. Of course, we kids did not really appreciate her effort, and would complain that it was taking too long, or the finished product was burnt, cold, or tasted funny. Secretly, however, we enjoyed this fallback to an earlier era of pioneer cooking.
Now of course we needed fuel for the stove. An area of the basement about 10 x 8 feet had been converted to a coal bin. There was a short access chute into the garage. Several times a year the coal truck would come and dump a ton or so of coal through the chute. When I was older, my job was to stay in the coal bin in the basement and shovel the cascading coal away from the chute so it could better fill the bin, and not jam the chute. Of course all that cascading coal raised a fair amount of coal dust as it slid into the bin…and the noise of all that falling coal in an enclosed space sounded like an avalanche. The coal was black and shiny, and about the size of a child’s fist. It was just the thing to shove in the Christmas stocking of a naughty boy or girl. My father often said he was glad when we were naughty, because he could use the coal that Santa was sure to bring us that year.
With the coal in place, and a fire in the furnace, every hour or so someone had to go down to the furnace to put a shovelful of coal on the fire. Open the front grate. Shake down the ashes, if necessary. Pick up the coal shovel and walk the few steps to the coal bin. Get a shovelful of coal and dump it on the fire. Put down the shovel and close the front grate. We had several cats at any given time. They saw the coal bin as a giant litter box. Every so often the shovelful of coal we placed on the fire would contain a deposit from the cats. What a nasty smell as it burned!
One job I hated was shoveling out the ashes. It really wasn’t too hard, though. You’d open a door at the bottom of the lower section of the furnace, and shovel the ashes from there into a bucket. Then you’d carry them outside and dump them on the garden. If there were any large chunks of unburned coal, we’d pick them up and throw them back in the coal bin to be reused.
Although most of us had mastered the skill of putting coal on the fire and adjusting it to keep it going, only my father had mastered the art of actually starting a fire. First he would chop up some kindling using a hatchet and a chopping block positioned near the furnace. He’d then chop up some larger pieces of wood as fuel, and carefully arrange it in the firebox. Using a little bit of newspaper as tinder, he’d start the wood fire, and slowly build it up to a nice blaze. Then he would carefully put the coal on. Too much coal, or applied too quickly, and it would smother the nascent wood fire. Too little, and the fire would take too long to build up heat, or would go out from lack of fuel.
Naturally, while the fire was building, there would be no heat in the house. My father would usually get up an hour or so early so he could get a fire going before he left for work, thus ensuring the rest of us would have a warm house when we awoke. Often, when we came home after a long visit to friends or relatives, we’d walk in the front door and find a cold house. "Uh oh. The fire’s out." Down into the basement my father would go to work his magic. Shivering in the cold house, we’d get ready for bed. Snuggled under the cover we’d listen for the air knocks that came as the newly generated steam moved through the pipes to warm the radiators in our rooms. We’d drift off to sleep with a reassuring "clonk" "clunk" "clonk" letting us know that heat was on the way.
David Neimeyer
31 December 2007
