The Coal Delivery's Here...

We have a lot to be thankful for when comparing some things today with those of the past. Things we don't even think about today until it’s time to pay the bill or a system goes down. One of those things is heating. No one thinks about that except to set the thermostat. We never see the guys who are responsible for piping natural gas through the underground mains of this city (nor do we care to), and the only time we pay attention to fuel delivery is when someone’s pumping heating oil into your neighbors' basement tanks. That’s because you're sitting in traffic behind the oil truck, steaming because you thought he'd be done a lot faster.  So were the drivers of the three cars that are waiting behind you, blocking you from backing up and retreating down a side street. Some oil customers have systems that notify the oil vendor that you're getting low, so there's no getting caught with a dry tank on weekends or on holidays. That still doesn't save you from sitting behind the delivery tanker. Thankfully, we don’t have to deal with propane deliveries in the city.
     It wasn't so easy not all that long ago. Fifty years seems long until those years are behind you. From talking with older folks who had experience with it, coal heating may have kept you warm, but it was in no way convenient. Often it kept you too hot because there were no thermostats at the time. You had to sympathize with ladies who had hot flashes. My only experience with coal heating came while watching trucks dump a load of it into someone's basement in our neighborhood. Being a kid in Philadelphia in the late-1960s, there was a lot going on to keep your curiosity flowing. Simple things often caught your attention. One of those things is something that isn't around anymore: the coal delivery man. Because no one heats their whole home with coal any more, and why would they? As a young observer, coal heating seemed dirty and laborious, and those older neighbors confirmed it. You had to shovel the black nuggets from a coal bin in your basement into the furnace, and you had to make sure to keep the fire going. One of our neighbors was one of the last to give in and get rid of his coal furnace and go with gas. Until he did, his sons were given the responsibilities of stoking the fire and they didn't dare let that fire go out. I've since heard that it took too much coal to restart the fire should that happen, making the furnace far less efficient. You had to clean it out just about daily, having to put buckets of ash on your sidewalk to be picked up like the trash. I wonder how elderly widows handled it if they had no adult children. It had to have been quite a task 
     Having an odd interest with things like this, I saw a newspaper story a few years ago where some people heat rooms with coal stoves and go to the dealer to buy coal pellets. That's much different than a load of dirty coal chunks. As kids, we saw that the only way to heat your home with coal was to have them bring it to you. We would sit on the steps of neighbors' homes as we watched the coal man lower the chute from his truck through a basement window into the coal bin, then dump his load of mined fuel. I guess if you were a coal customer, you bought by the truckload or the ton or whatever volume you needed.  That had to be tiresome. I could see rejoicing when springtime came because all this was over with. That was until the next year. Thankfully, our society has become much more advanced, so all we need to do now is turn on the heat and dial up the temperature that will keep us comfortable.  No more shovels to hurl the coal into the furnace or to clean it out. No more straining your back to get the ash out or getting soot all over. Our grandparents and maybe parents were probably used to it. Thank God for advances that make tings like this history.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
... Coal dealers spread throughout the city.  You can still find reminders of those relics in some parts of Philadelphia that are zoned as industrial or commercial areas.  I remember not too long ago yards on South 25th Street that had signs that read "Coal and Ice".  There were a few dealers there under the old railroad trestle years back. They had things covered year-round. If they had relied only on coal customers, they would have had a seasonal business. The ice kept the old iceboxes of the day cold and customers happy, especially in the summertime.
https://www.phillyhistory.org/PhotoArchive/Detail.aspx?assetId=7884

...Thinking of home heating oil. there have been a few incidents in Philly and other cities where oil was delivered to a home that no longer used it. The filler spout in the outside wall remained, and a driver had the wrong address, - that address - and wound up pumping the oil onto the basement floor. It had to be a mess: both the cleanup and dealing with the oil dealer and insurance companies. It's suggested that when converting from oil to gas, to remove the spout or fill it with concrete to prevent a rare (but not too rare) occurrence like this from happening.
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/company-pumps-100-gallons-of-oil-into-wrong-prince-georges-county-home-flooding-basement

https://www.abc27.com/news/heating-oil-misdelivery-forces-family-out-of-home-for-months/

My Friend The Professor and My First Job

There are friends who you remember throughout your lifetime: ones who you don't or can't forget. They're always there to talk to lift your spirits, give advice, or are on your mind when thinking back on old times. My friend Kenny - aka The Professor - is one of those friends and was quite a character. We came up together from grade school onward, remaining friends through our adulthood with a bit of a pause. He moved away somewhere in New Jersey and I hadn't heard from him since shortly after I was married in the 1980s. That's until we reconnected a few years ago and now we keep up occasionally.  Some friends thought Kenny got his nickname "The Professor" because people thought he looked like a university educator. The truth is it was because he wore a lab coat while taking Optical Lab at Bok where we took shared-time classes between there and Bishop Neumann High. I had taken the Electric Shop, so we went in different directions when entering school. That's if we made it to Bok, sometimes cutting classes and taking the afternoon off. There were a couple of times where we stopped at his house between classes and had a few beers before heading into class. That wasn't a wise thing. Electricity, alcohol, and irresponsibility were a recipe for mayhem. Thankfully we both became responsible adults. We were good friends both in both our youth and as we age. We both shared an interest in the same type of music and a few other things, although there were some things that could have kept us from a good friendship neither of us let them get in the way.     Professor was famous for his parties. He had gotten me a job at the factory where he worked with other neighborhood friends among others. He and I and a former classmate named Steve worked there together for a couple of years before moving on to much better jobs. There were days that Professor didn't come to work because of those parties, he was having too much of a good time to let the job get in the way. Not that the job was anything spectacular. To get into those parties, you had to be an active participant in the event being held. For instance, during the "Beat the Skunk" party, he had a large stuffed-toy skunk that you had to take a few swings at if you were going to be admitted. No swing, you were out the door. Same with the "Burn the Pope's Picture" party. This happened around the time that Pope John Paul II came to Philly, and before Sinead O'Connor ripped up his photo on Saturday Night Live. If you didn't bring the full-color photo that the Inquire inserted in the Sunday paper, you couldn't come in. No reasonable facsimiles allowed.
     Professor's father was a quiet, retired man who was home every day. The unusual thing was that he would turn over the house to Kenny and his parties instead of kicking everyone out. If twenty or so young guys and girls showed up at my door with pictures of the pope and no good intentions on their mind, my dad would have thrown everyone out, myself included.
     Being the straight man, I often missed these events. I never wanted to miss work, and on one of the days I tried to skip, I got caught. I remember a day when SEPTA was on strike and a few of us devised a plan to call in and tell the boss we couldn't come to work because we had no ride. The problem was, we did it from a payphone down the block from the job, and two of the ladies walked by as we were calling in. The boss said we should all meet at my house, and he was on the way to pick us up. I tried to do a quick recovery: "Uh, hang on a second...What?...Oh yeah?... Hey, my dad's going to drive us up, we'll be there shortly." Busted! I wasn't even thinking that traffic noise near the public phone may be giving my intentions away. O, being young and stupid!
     I believe Steve may have attended some of those parties. We all worked at a factory that made bedroom slippers for the ladies. It was a good place to start your working life, but you definitely didn't want to stay there; one of those places that was as much a playground as a place to work. One day I was looking down the freight elevator shaft, waiting for the lift to come up for me at the top floor, the fifth. Some guy John was getting on the elevator as it stopped on three. And lo, there was Steve on four, hoisting over the top of the gate a bucket of white glue and water. He dumped it right down on his victim, and on the boss who walked on just as he started to pour. Both men yelled, and Steve took off down the fire escape, and no one but he and I were the wiser to what happened. I buckled over from laughing so hard that I don't know how I recovered before they made their way up to me. The next time I saw Steve downstairs, he said, "Don't say a word..." and of course, I wasn't. We had a great laugh and the other two had to clean up: the boss had a change of clothing, but John had to head home because his clothes were soaked in glue and water.
     Sure, I worked some crummy jobs before getting training and into a career rather than just a job. But at least I had some fun, even in the worst of them. One thing I noticed, that as I went to a new job I got more responsibility and money, but had less fun. Oh well, it was a good trade-off. All young guys should have a dirty, lousy job before they launch a career. It will help them to appreciate the good jobs when they come, and the fun they had while waiting for the good work to come.
    Professor and I took different career paths, as you can't expect to do the same thing as all your friends. But wherever we landed, we both have some fine memories as well as humorous ones to look back on. That's always a great thing.