Days of the Coal

When my mother was a little girl, this area once located next to Bernard and Mary Cafferty's house was a coal yard. My mother remembers the days when money was so tight that there were times when my grandmother asked her to walk by this coal yard and see if she could find any loose pieces of coal outside the gates for their own furnace.

When I was a little girl, I remember sitting on the basement steps at my grandparents' house watching my grandfather shoveling loads of coal into the fiery furnace. it would not be until 1969 that their coal furnace was replaced by oil heat.