Growing up in the country in Southern Illinois, we had a big cast iron stove
in the middle of the living room. Big chunks of coal was thrown in and the
ashes were shaken out of the bottom.
We finally got a "Stokermatic" stove, again in the middle of the living room.
It had a bin on the side, where you dumped in the coal. Took about 3 of those
big plastic buckets to fill up, and yes the dust flew. It was fed into the
firebox with an auger ran with an electric motor. There was also a blower fan
that would blow air around the outside of the stove to circulate the heat in
the house, ( I still had frost on the inside of my windows some mornings, even
though they were double windows)
The stupid thing depended on electricity to run and naturally the power would
go out on the worst and coldest ice storms. Then you had to kind of feed it by
hand.
I shoveled and hauled a LOT of coal as a kid. My father got a small discount
because he worked at the mines. Sometimes there would be a temperature
inversion or something with the air pressure and we would wake up with the
house full of smoke. Whey we all never died in our sleep from carbon monoxide
poisoning I will never know. Every couple of years there would be some family
in the region that would die from it.
A couple years back the Mayor of Sesser complained because he couldn't even
find enough coal to put eyes on a snowman. Pretty sad for an old mining town.
Kelley Wright.
--- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, Robert McNay <CptMatt@...> wrote:
>
> In the late 1960's, the apartment building across the street from my parent's
> house still had a coal fired furnace/hot water system. The side of the
> building
> had a cast iron chute/door and every so often, a truck from Lill Coal & Oil
> on
> Broadway would stop by. There was no parkway in front of the chute, just a
> wide
> concreted area that sloped to the street. The truck would back up, the driver
> lifted the lid, swung the chute down to it and let rip. Huge black clouds
> would
> rise up from the rumble.
>
> The dust usually ticked off the owners of the cars that parked too close to
> the
> drive.
>
> Rob McNay
> Chicago IL
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Thomas Mitchell <conductor67@...>
> To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Tue, February 28, 2012 2:13:54 PM
> Subject: [CBQ] Re:
>
>
>
>
> Fuel oil deliveries to homes via truck were quite common in Detroit, Mi in
> the
> 50's & 60's. My parents had the tank in the area where the old coal bin &
> chute
> were located. The old octopus furnace had been converted from coal. I still
> remember helping friends shovel the ashes out of their coal furnaces after
> school.
> Tom Mitchell
> conductor67@...
>
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CBQ/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CBQ/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
CBQ-digest@yahoogroups.com
CBQ-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
CBQ-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
|