WHAT IT WAS LIKE IN THE COAL AGE

When I was a boy, in the '50s, I lived during what I called "the coal age". Oil, that black gunky stuff known as petroleum or "rock oil" had been in common use for a hundred years, but coal was still king in Brooklyn. Everyone on our block heated their homes with coal. The end product of coal burning--ash and little sharp nuggets called cinders were everywhere. My grandparents big back yard on 56th Street was surfaced with coal ash and cinders. Piles of cinders were commonly used for fill. I fell into a pile as a child and still carry a bit of cinder in my chin. The cinders in grandma's yard made a good hard surface, though a little crunchy to walk on. After a while a few hardy plants grew up through the cinders, and I recall grandma grew the best and most fragrant lillies of the valley right in the cinders. Tough, metal-ringed ash-barrels, not flimsy garbage cans, were a common sight on the sidewalks, or tucked away in a corner of the back yard or in an alleyway. In those days, there was more ash and less "garbage" since lots of waste was simply burned on the coal fire. The coal age had its advantages for our house pets too. When our dog Queenie was given a bone too big for her present appetite she would simply take it in her teeth and quickly head down the cellar stairs to the coal bin to hide it. Soon we could hear her digging in the coal bin and the coal slide and slump downward as she dug into the base of the pile. I guess few of her buried dog bones were ever recovered. They were often shoveled up with the coal and went right into the boiler. I do wonder though how mom let her walk around the house with those coal dusted feet.

Some kids (me) even got coal in their Christmas stockings!

Our public elementary school was heated with coal and each morning tens of barrels of dusty ash were hauled out of the building's basement as the students lined up to go into class. Mom's kitchen stove was indirectly powered by coal too. The local Brooklyn Union Gas Company (BUGCo) generated coal gas for our stoves (and some house-heating too) by converting a form of coal (coke) into gas and piping it underground throughout the borough. On cold mornings when the air was still the sulfury smell of "coal gas" from their Greenpoint plant seeped through the neighborhood. Mostly it just smelled bad, but some people reacted with headaches and fatigue too. By 1952 the gas company had completed a nearly 2000 mile pipeline from Texas to Brooklyn to carry "natural" gas. That stuff had no smell at all. It represented a danger from explosion if you left a gas jet on or your pilot light went out. So the gas company added a garlic odor to the gas for safety. That old cold gas aroma on still winter nights was just a memory after that.

Most men on our block worked in "the City" and traveled back and forth to work on the BMT train. The electricity to run that train and the other lines in the City was generated by coal. My Dad's transportation was an exception, he used gasoline. He drove a 1949 Plymouth sedan to work. Because of coal and the cheap electricity for transport there were few cars on our block and on any work day, I could look up and down the street and see the curb from 14th Avenue all the way down to 16th....not one parked car.

Late in the summer of the year or early fall, my father would order our year's supply of coal for heating our house in Brooklyn--and making hot water too. The coal we used was the shiny, hard stuff known as hard coal or anthracite. It was delivered to us by the barrel--so many barrels to the ton--and it came crushed into pieces about the size of a walnut. We had no telephone so Dad had to stop in at to Ice and Coal company on Bath Avenue to put the order in. A few days later, a big black truck with hard-rubber tires and a chain drive, its body all sprinkled and dusted with coal dust would roll up to our alleyway. Several big burly black men, wearing coal-stained leather aprons and huge leather gauntlets would exit the truck and pull from the undercarriage a long metal chute, its inner surface polished to a mirror-like gloss by the abrasion of the hard coal. On that day, Dad would open the basement window from within, and the delivery men would slide the chute down into the nearly empty wood-slat coal bins. Then, they would begin the noisy delivery by filling their great wood barrels on the street at the side of the truck and rolling them noisily, with sounds like distant thunder, through the alley to the top of the open chute. The coal, which had been sprayed with water --to cut down on dust-crashed down onto the slick metal chute and slid to a grumbling stop in the gray, coal bin where every now and again some pieces would rattle down the slope and roll across the floor to the base of the boiler where all of it would eventually end up. These great rumblings could be heard throughout the house. Coal dust, notwithstanding the coal being water sprayed, seeped out of the bins and settled everywhere in the house. When you blew your nose in the "coal age" you could always find little black specks in your white handkerchief. It was just normal. Until I was a grown man, I thought those black specks was just a natural human exudate--not the results of the dirt and dust of coal age.

p Dad burned that coal all year in the great steam boiler in the cellar, right across from the wood framed and wood slatted coal bins. Near-by, he kept neat piles of old newspapers and a stack of "starting wood". Starting wood could be anything that burned, cardboard, old furniture, tree trimmings, used dimension lumber, painted wood, furring strips, or old plaster-wall laths. Anything that was wood-like and burnable could be used to start the coal fire. In Brooklyn, wood was scarce, so Dad was constantly on the look-out for good "starting wood". When he brought a pile home in the back seat of our 1949 Plymouth sedan, I often got the job of carring it down to the basement and cutting it up with the hand saw then splitting it with a hatchet into pieces that would fit into the boiler. With some starter wood, Dad would make sure I removed any useful nails, screws, and other hardware that could be salvaged. The salvaged hardware from this wood would go into old mason jars or wood boxes. A favorite box for this purpose was the four by twelve inch "Philly" boxes in which squares of foil-covered Philadelphia Cream Cheese were delivered to local stores. They were neat and strong and Dad eventually made a cabinet in which these boxes served as drawers.

Coal burns hot, but it does not start up too easily. A good hot wood fire is needed to get coal going. Then, near-constant attention was required to keep the fire actually burning. If it went out, there would be no steam heat upstairs, and no hot water for the baths. So my Dad, when passing through a room, would out of habit pause to touch the corner steam pipes or tap the radiator under the window just to be certain their temperature (and the fire in the boiler) were up to snuff. At intervals during a cold day he (or some designee like me) had to add shovels of coal to the top of the glowing bed, adjust the damper to let in more air, and after that, shake the grates violently so that the coal ash at the bottom would settle down into the base of the fire pit--where, of course these gray dusty ashes mixed with unburned coal and stony, vesicular pieces called "cinders"which had to be removed by shovel and dumped into an ash barrel. Now that was a very dusty job!

Coal ash and cinders were a burden on our trash-man's back. Ash was heavy and dusty but it had to be removed and dumped by the City. We didn't know where it wound up, but it was carried off. Some people made use of the ash and cinders around their homes by spreading the stuff around, as we would spread gravel or rock chips today. Cinders would make a good solid road-bed and ash and cinders were found everywhere. As a young child, while playing on an ash and cinder dump in our back yard, I slipped off my tricycle and fell headlong into a pile of sharp-edged cinders. One small sharp piece was driven deep into my soft childhood chin. So even many decades later, I can still see the little scar and feel that little lump of cinder ash under my chin...a memento from a boyhood accident in the coal age.

Each night, from my warm bed, I would hear Dad, go down the creaky cellar stairs, then hear the big iron boiler door squeal open. I would listen as he attached the big metal shaker-handle and rhythmically rattle the grates so the ash would fall through the grate. it was that troublesome ash which would block the air. Dad was very methodical and thorough. Whatever he did he did right. And he took a good long time on that grate. Then I would hear the scrape of the big wide coal shovel as he scooped several loads through the opened boiler door. After that the chain on the damper control would rattle as Dad closed off the amount of air reaching the fire (so it would keep burning through the night) and finally, he would climb back up the creaky cellar stairs and shut the door.

The fire would keep burning at a slow rate all night long. But don't oversleep in the coal age because quite early in the morning the whole process had to be completed again--or the fire would go out! . More shaking, more ashes removed, a thin layer of coal applied to the small bed of burning embers, then the damper opened and more coal added. Finally, upstairs we would hear the nice hot steam rising in the pipes, the heat would expand the metal and strange regular tapping noises would be heard as the pipes complained like ghosts tripping about in the basement of the old house. Soon, I could smell the hot radiator and hear the low whistle of the the steam vent in the big radiator in the living room. That was how it was in the coal age.

If for some reason, perhaps during a particularly cold or windy night the fire might burn too fast and by morning...it was out. Cold! No coal embers. No heat and no hot water. Dad would be furious. Then he had to start a wood fire. Get that wood fire going hot and slowly add the coal until a good bed of embers were formed then more coal could be added and...the fire could be damped again for the day. But that would take some time...and cause a very hectic, chilly morning and a long wait for hot tap water and perhaps no breakfast.

Of course you couldn't leave your house in the winter...for the coal fire would go out and very soon on a cold day the pipes would freeze. A disaster! There was much fear and anxiety in the coal age...and no long winter vacations. So near the end of the fifties, slowly, but surely...the coal trucks were replaced with oil trucks on our block. But our neighbor old Mr and Mrs. Strand....they held on to coal well into the sixties.