Good Provider

March 7 2015

My father must have shovelled coal

in the dim basement

in the old house

where the big black furnace lurked,

like some multi-armed beast

in beaten armour

with a thick patina of soot.

Dark bituminous chunks

clattered down the chute.

Choking dust

hung blackly,

suspended

in the weak incandescence

of a single bulb.

Ducts rattled, heat raged.

Fire roared

in its cast-iron bed.

The tired grate

glowed cherry red

if left untended for long.

It was small, post-war,

on a raw plot

on a dirt road

on the far suburban fringe.

He worked hard

was a good provider.

Then came home,

and shovelled coal.

I am not old

but have learned how slippery memory is.

All I have

are fragments, and glimpses

of what may have been.

Yet how medieval

that life now seems.

Demonic chimneys

smudging the sky.

Damp cellars

with little head-room

and earthen floors.

And a bad furnace

like some antiquated forge,

with its delicate balance

of fuel and air

flue, and damper, and ash.

Demanding coal

shovelled by hand.

A milk-man, a bread-man

saluting door-to-door.

A man delivering coal.

And a father who shovelled it,

tie loosened

shirt-sleeves rolled.

I was too terrified

to step downstairs.

All I know

is that the house was always warm

the coal bin never empty.

And that the temperamental furnace

at which even my father cursed,

which would have devoured children, if left to itself,

had its fire dutifully tended

its hunger fed.

Heat coaxed

from its blackened core.

I have a vague fragmentary memory of our old house, its dank dark basement, and that ancient coal-burning furnace. I can picture my father as a young man with a young family, dutifully tending this insatiable and temperamental beast. While we, his small children, were too afraid to even go downstairs; took for granted our food and shelter and warmth.

Nowadays, basements are beautifully finished recreation rooms and hi-tech entertainment centres. We thoughtlessly heat with solar or clean gas, at the touch of a thermostat. I think of all the other social, cultural, and technological change over the intervening years – attitudes to smoking, drinking, sex, seatbelts, pollution, gender, and race; never mind iPhones and satellites – and realize what a different world we inhabit after such a relatively short passage of time. So I guess I wrote this as a way to document what life was so recently like. My memory that far back is tenuous, at best. So  I can just imagine how shocking this will seem to anyone even a little younger than me (I was born in 1955):  imagine, actually shovelling coal in your own home!

...Since I originally posted this, I had a chance to check with my older brother. And it turns out memory is, indeed, slippery. The furnace was oil, not coal. Although apparently my father told a story about neglecting his coal-shovelling duties at his old family home, and allowing the furnace to die in the middle of night in a Winnipeg winter. So I suppose this tale must have combined with my childhood aversion to that dark basement and produced a false memory. Nevertheless, I'll keep the poem. Because -- true or not -- it says a lot about fatherly duty, as well as post-war suburban life.