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/
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