An auger not an ogre
Keeping warm is always on my mind. I do live in the far north and we do get seasons here. Today I’m going to reflect on a period that my children never knew. The days when we heated our homes with coal. I made it there a couple of times. They’re really used a lot of coal and in some of our houses we had call to keep things hot. Coal was never a warm fuel. But, in one province, for one year we had something special. An almost automated furnace. Let me explain. There was a special window on the side of the house that led to a small room in the basement. On a regular basis a horse and cart would arrive and the driver would dump a certain amount of coal in through the whole. Fuel in lumps. And once the horses had left the driveway the next part was on the homeowner. We used that fuel to fill up a special box that we called the auger. It meant a large contraption with an endless screw inside and we would shovel coal into the maw of that box. Then over the period of the next few days the auger would move fuel from the box into the furnace. Now that was only half the job. We then had to clear the ashes out of the furnace and carry them outside to the driveway where we had a surface that was non-slip. The ashes had lots of sharp edges and you did not want to fall on them. But from the time the horse cart would arrive until the ashes met the ground we were warm. With that particular odor attached to heating your house with coal. One of those things you never forget. In contrast, I now have a water furnace. A very different sort of animal.
