Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years.
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During the mid to late 1930s, our house on West Fifth Street got wintertime visits from a man named O.L. Spurrier. Mr. Spurrier owned and operated a coal company in Marysville, located on the east side of North Main Street just north of the railroad crossing, and he supplied us with coal throughout the winter months. He lived on the east side of Ash Street in the first house north of West Seventh Street.
He would pull his truck into our driveway and position it as close as possible to our back porch. He would then raise a trap door in the porch floor to expose a coal chute. Then he set up a heavy metal slide between the truck and the coal chute. When that was done, he began shoveling coal into the chute.
As a little kid, I would sit on the porch and watch the whole thing. It was hard work for him, and his face was often black with coal dust.
We required several deliveries from Mr. Spurrier throughout the winter because we had three uses for his coal. There was a coal furnace in the basement, a coal-burning grate in the living room fireplace, and during the winter there was a coal burning cook-stove in the kitchen. Most of the coal, of course, was used in the furnace.
My dad tried to keep the furnace burning all night long in winter. Instead of a thermostat, there was a cast iron control mounted on the wall in our dining room, directly over the furnace. It had a movable pointer that was connected by a chain to vents below the flames. Turn the pointer clockwise, and more air would feed the flames and generate more heat. At night, you would do just the opposite and hope the bed of coals was still there in the morning.
If it was, my dad would simply add chunks of coal to the fire. If it wasn’t, you would use a tool to shake the ashes down into a trap at the bottom of the furnace. Then he started a fire from scratch, using crumpled newspapers, kindling and small pieces of coal. What a way to start the day!
The coal stove in our kitchen had to be started every morning. My grandmother kept a supply of kindling handy, and she could get a good fire going in that stove so fast you wouldn’t believe it.
It must have been a challenge to cook on that stove. The only way she had to control the temperature was the size of the fire inside and where she placed the pots and pans on the cooking surface. I don’t know how she did it, but she was really good at it.
Then there was the oven in that stove. I have never understood how someone could bake in an oven without being able to set the temperature. In fact, she didn’t even have a clue what the temperature was inside. I guess she just kept opening the oven door until things looked right. And I never remember her baking anything that wasn’t really good.
During the cold winter months, the coal cook-stove had another advantage. It supplemented the furnace in keeping the house nice and warm. But by the time summer rolled around, that stove got a rest. The last thing we needed in summer was something to make the house hotter.
So sometime around the end of June, the cooking was switched too a second stove in our kitchen. It was a coal oil stove, and the burners could be turned on and off as needed. A glass jug, that held about a gallon of coal oil, sat on a shelf at one end of the stove. When the supply of coal oil got low, my grandmother would carry the jug to Bonnette’s gas station at the corner of Fifth and Maple Streets. Someone would fill it for her, and I think the cost was somewhere around 15 cents.
All of this changed a couple years later when we got our first gas furnace and gas stove in the kitchen. My mother, of course, loved this, but I’m not sure my grandmother felt the same way. I think she kind of prided herself on cooking on that old coal stove, so I think she really missed it.
She eventually got used to it, and her cooking continued to be great. I think the only one who came out on the short end of this whole thing was Mr. Spurrier. When coal furnaces and coal cook-stoves started to disappear, Mr. Spurrier’s coal delivery days were numbered. No longer could I sit on the back porch and watch him shovel coal into our coal chute. I missed Mr. Spurrier’s visits.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at bill@davidwboyd.com