I attended two elementary schools, one for 1st through 3rd grades, one for 4th through 6th. One day in 1974 or 1975, I found what I thought was a cool-looking rock in the gutter outside school. I brought it home and that night my father asked me why I was playing with a lump of coal.
In the 1990s, several hundred NYC public schools that still had coal-fired boilers were converted to “dual fuel” boilers that could burn oil or gas. I got worked on about a dozen of these projects designing a hole: creating a shaft next to the basement wall and a hole through the basement wall that could be used to lower in the new boilers in one piece. One of the schools was my second elementary; thus I denied future kids the joys of gutter anthracite.
You had a lump of coal to play with?!?
~
your Dad may have missed an opportunity for an ongoing Christmas gag gift.
Oooh, thanks. The response to this is my next post.
Well? I am WAITING.
I just got up from my nap. Sheesh.
http://nedbeaumontjr.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/patience/
We used to dream of having coal to play with
Don’t play with your food, lad.
thus I denied future kids the joys of gutter anthracite.
and black lung