Terry's Turn: New electric furnace lacks allure of old coal burner

Back then our furnace used coal and probably lots of it. My new electric model is small, but the one I knew as a kid was huge. It always reminded me of some kind of monster with gigantic arms or tentacles that emanated from the top of its bulbous body. It was like the giant squid Kirk Douglas fought in the Disney movie “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” Every time I went down the basement I expected it to reach out and grab me, then shove me into its fiery maw.

Coal for the monster was delivered by a truck that had a chute extending out the back. The driver would pull into our driveway, then open a door on the outside wall of our basement and connect the chute to it. Coal would roll out of the truck, down the chute and into our basement coal bin.

Dad was in charge of keeping the fire going, and I’m sure he was good at it. He worked for the railroad as an engineer but started his career as a fireman keeping the boiler going for the steam engine. There’s got to be a lot of skill involved in keeping that fire in a steam engine at the right temperature, and I’m sure he applied that skill to heat our house.

I don’t remember how old I was when we upgraded from the old coal furnace to a new one that used oil, but I do remember what happened next. My mother decided she wanted to use the now empty coal bin as a storage room for the many vegetables she canned during the summer and fall. The task of cleaning the black and dirty coal bin fell to my older brother and me. We jumped at the chance because we were going to get paid and that didn’t happen very often.

Armed with brooms, dust pans and several trash cans, we set about cleaning that unbelievably filthy room. Clouds of black coal dust filled the air as we swept away, getting covered with the remnants of years of coal. It took several hours, but we finally finished and we did it all without benefit of any kind of filtering mask. It’s a good thing OSHA or Child Protective Services didn’t show up or Mom would have ended up in the slammer.

Once we were done my brother and I looked at each other then started pointing and laughing. He looked like a shadow of his former self and I’m sure I did too. From the top of our heads to the tips of our toes we were black as…well, coal. Our mother came downstairs at about the time we finished and almost fainted when she saw her two sons.

“Don’t you dare come upstairs like that!” she said. “You both take a shower down here.” Our dad had a makeshift shower in the basement that only he used. It was just a shower head attached to a pipe over a floor drain and I’m sure he used it to wash off coal dust too. No curtain or privacy. My brother showered first while I looked the other way, then it was my turn. Once we were clean we were able to return to polite society and collect our fee.

Our new furnace is much cleaner and much more efficient than the coal burner of my childhood, but it just doesn’t have the same allure as the old one. Plus you can’t get dirty cleaning this one.