We lived on the first floor of a two-family house in Orange. Each family had their own furnace and their own coal bin. For some reason, the builder put the bins at the rear of the cellar, unreachable directly from the street. When we got a ton of coal, it had to be hand-carried around the building to a cellar window.
The driver and his helper took turns pouring coal from a chute in the truck’s tailgate into wire-framed canvas baskets slung on their backs, then carried them down the driveway and behind the house. There they dumped the coal down a metal chute that ran through a cellar window and into one of the bins. My bedroom was directly above the bins; one day we got a coal delivery on a school holiday, and I took a weird pride in learning I had slept through the racket.
I was in charge of stoking our furnace when I got home from school. That meant shaking the ashes down through the grates and adding fresh coal on top. If the fire was ever allowed to go out, that was a major failure on the stoker’s part, and a major project for a grownup to get a new fire started. The remaining ashes and cinders had to be removed by shaking them through the grates, then a new fire laid, starting with crumpled newspaper, then strips of wood, then a layer of coal, followed by a match and a prayer.
One afternoon I forgot to tend the furnace. By the time I remembered, it was five o’clock, and when I pulled open the furnace door to add coal the fire was almost out, the last few embers dull red. I piled on some coal anyway, hoping against hope, but after a few minutes I could see it wasn’t catching. I got the idea of adding a little turpentine from the Mason jar we kept to clean paint brushes in. Well, it proved not possible to add just a little turpentine, because when I started pouring, the jar instantly caught fire. I dropped it into the embers and WHOOMPH there went my eyebrows.
The idea worked fine otherwise, and by the time my mother got home, the furnace was working, the house was warm, and I had washed my face. I’m sure she noticed my eyebrows, but my family doesn’t ask questions.