The Coal Furnace

When I was eight years old, my mother bought a house.  That sentence wouldn’t raise any eyebrows in this day and age, but in 1963, women generally didn’t buy houses.  Their husbands did, or their fathers did. 

And so it was that my single-parent mother, who was the sole support of two children and two elderly parents, had to rely on the co-signature of her retired father in order to buy a house for us.

The edifice was huge, especially to a child of eight.  It was a multi-story, multi-apartment structure that was purchased to provide an apartment for our mom and us kids, an apartment for my grandparents, and two other rental apartments as a means of income.

We lived in the North, in Ohio, where winters were cold and long.  And it will take some explaining to a modern audience in saying that one of my childhood memories was our coal furnace.  Rather, it was our mother “wrestling” the coal furnace.

She called it “The Monster” and that seemed an apt description.  It ate like a monster.  It belched hot air like a monster.  And the feeding of it was a daily ritual that sounds like a tale out of the Middle Ages.

Every morning, mother got up at 5 a.m., in the pre-dawn dark.  The house had grown freezing cold during the night, but everyone was snuggled under the covers so no one noticed.  Except Mom, of course, who had to face the cold head on.  She arose so early in order to “Feed the monster” and get the house warmed up before my younger sister and elderly grandparents had to get up.

She was a sight to behold in her coal-stoking getup!  In those days women would wear a loose fitting dress-like garment called a muumuu.  Mom had these in every color of the rainbow.  On her head was a white terry cloth turban to cover her hair and protect from the sifting layer of coal-dust she was about to stir up.  Then her fuzzy slippers completed the ensemble.  I have a rather hazy memory of this outfit, because I managed on occasion to wake up and stumble down from the upstairs bedroom to the main floor, still wearing my warm, zip-up, footie pajamas and wrapped in my special blanket.  I would curl up in the big chair and catch a glimpse of her before she descended the basement stairs, or, covered in coal dust after she emerged from tending “The Monster.”

Let me describe what she was actually doing.  I’ll have to use my imagination here a bit, because I wasn’t allowed to attend the ceremony, being very young and vulnerable to fire from “The Monster.”  In the basement was a very large furnace.  It was blackened.  It was much larger and much more sinister looking than modern-day “furnaces” that tuck neatly into closets in the hallway.  They are weak cousins to this Furnace, and barely deserve the same name. 

She would approach with black coal shovel in hand.*  She would go to the front hatch of the furnace and pull open the door.  Then, going to the bin of coal in the corner of the dank, cement-walled basement, she shoveled many shovels full of black coal into “The Monster’s” gaping mouth.  Dropping the shovel, she then took up a large metal poker and stabbed and stirred up the new coal so that it caught fire from the embers in the bottom of the furnace.  This was no ordinary fireplace poker, like you may have in your living room; it was almost as long as she was tall, and plunging it into the fiery cavern must have felt like stabbing the heart of darkness.

Mother would emerge, tired but unscathed (except for the layer of black dust), change her clothes and make our breakfast.  As my little sister and I stood over the “registers,” gleefully feeling the “whoosh” of the hot air that now bellowed from the basement furnace into all the rooms of the 3-story house, we knew whom we had to thank for that delicious feeling of warmth.  Our fearless mother who fed the coal monster!

After several years of this ritual, my uncle took pity on my mother’s plight.  He paid $700.00 dollars to convert our coal furnace into a gas furnace.  No more coal deliveries, coal bin, coal dust, or getting up at 5 in the morning !  Flick of a switch.

Thanks, Mom.  In fantasy stories, the brave knight slays the dragon.  In mine, the loving, selfless mom fed the monster.

PS  *The coal was delivered to our house every several weeks by a dump truck which pulled up to the side of the house, opened the “coal chute,” and unloaded the coal with a crunching, crashing sound into our basement.  I still remember hearing the sound of the truck pull up, and the coal nuggets swooshing and crashing under the house!