Remember then?

[Floyd R. Turbo]

[rsdsharp]

1. In the house in which I grew up, there was a hinged window above the coal bin in the basement.

The truck drove up, the window was latched in the up position, the coal was dropped in, and the window closed.

We got a gas furnace when air was three.

[LoisB]

2. Sure do.

[Americanme]

3. I have a coal room in my old house

I sealed the coal door, converted the room to storage for my wife's christmas decorations. The old steam boiler first burned coal, then converted to fuel oil, then later to natural gas. The boiler still looks like new, they built those old things to last forever. My house was originally built in the 1860's, moved in the 1920's, when they built the airport, and I think that is when the boiler was installed.

[Clouds Passing]

4. Yep, my next door neighbor had one. Watched the coal truck dump, then the guys would

shovel it into the bin in the cellar. We had a new fangled electric heater.

[hunter]

5. I once got a parking ticket for blocking a neighbor's sidewalk coal chute.

I got the ticket dismissed because the house hadn't taken a coal delivery for at least fifty years.

Our house, which was across the street, had a big iron "octopus furnace" in the basement that had originally burned coal. It had been converted to oil in the 'forties, and was converted again to gas in the 'sixties. The basement still smelled of oil and coal dust. The oil tank had been removed but some of the oil pipes remained.

It's hard to imagine how dirty the air in cities must have been when everyone was heating their homes with coal unless you've been to a place where they still do.

[rurallib]

9. I remember the smell, but I also remember the cinders that were

poured on our street as a 'paving' of sorts. Heck of a place to learn to ride a bike.

[JoseBalow]

6. We had one of these

for milk



Similar, but different.

[quaint]

7. Nothing like that in SoCal but we did have an incinerator in the backyard.

[Emile]

8. Yes I remember the coal truck backing up the driveway and

dumping coal down the chute into the basement. Coal dust would be all over the house after dumping. I remember waking up in the morning to a cold house. Get dressed and run down to the basement, clean out the cinders and shovel new coal into the furnace. Take the bucket of cinders out to the driveway where dad would drive his old Ford Henry J back and forth crunching the cinders with the car tires. I remember how thrilled we were when Dad bought a gas furnace from Sears.