The choice
for fossil fuel in the 1940’s was Kerosene. We had a single burner in our
living room that was meant to heat the two flats we occupied. Days like today
when the temperature reached zero or below you realized how inefficient that
was. The farther away from the single source of heat the colder it was. The
bedrooms were on the higher level and what little heat reached that level, the
more blankets you piled on. By morning it was so cold that my mother would have
to coax us out of bed. We raced to the living room burner in hopes of avoiding
hypothermia.
When we
moved we graduated to coal as our main source of heat. The coal truck would
drive close to our cellar window, insert a chute and deliver coal to our coal
bin. Now nothing was automatic. My father would shovel the coal into a
monstrous burner that resembled the ones that powered the Lusitania Cruise
ship. If we had exceptionally cold weather, then he would have to get up in the
middle of the night to refire the burner.
I used to
love to watch the coal tumbling down the chute. It is a wonder I didn’t get coal
miners lung disease from all the coal dust I inhaled.
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