I just realised that I have never seen or used it, neither crude oil of course, but there are more variants of it than this natural mineral that powers a lot of the world.
What led to you seeing or touching coal?
My dad grew up in England in the 20s and 30s, and they always burned coal in their fireplaces (wood much harder to come by there). He always talked about how long it burned and was kind of nostalgic for it, even though we lived in southern California and he was a contractor, so we always had lots of wood from his jobs. When I was a teenager, he decided to get a big bag of it, and it really did make great fires, but it’s messy and smells bad.
We also have a small lump in a little square box with our Christmas stuff that someone got as a novelty gag gift and we never threw it away.
From the former prime minister of Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkyuI3oiGNE
for those wondering: “this is coal”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea5bOaPkZpc
Yep. Visited the coal mines in northern PA as a little kid. Going underground was super cool.
Tour Ed Mines represent!
We used it to heat our house growing up. But only on the very coldest nights, normally we’d use wood since the coal would actually put out too much heat. This was the 80s through early 90s in New York state, us.
I had a hookah for a long time, so yes.
Did you never seen someone grill? Or had art classes? I’ve even seen the massive coal mines being excavated here in Germany.
Did you never seen someone grill? Or had art classes?
That’s not coal; that’s charcoal, which is typically a wood byproduct.
That’s, usually not even charcoal. (Well “briquettes” isn’t. Briquettes are mostly sand and filler)
I wouldn’t grill with anything but anthracite and even then, I don’t know that I would. You guys actually use coal from the ground at bbqs? We mostly use charcoal which is pyrolysed wood
Yeah, was walking over a bridge over some train tracks as a train was going by, had hopper cars full of coal.
Oh yeah, filled up dump trucks of it. Every year in the fall my grandfather would order a ton (probably more like 10 tons) of coal and it was up to all of us to shovel it out and divide for everyone to use and share
Yeah, used it for heating, just until few years ago when we switched entirely to central heating, mainly because it become illegal to use coal for heating in my area.
Western PA, literally everything is near an abandoned coal mine. The woods near my house growing up had sink holes all over the place and coal just sitting on the sides of the hill where it had been dumped and abandoned.
My neighbour used it for heating in winter when I was a kid.
My father runs live steam engines.
In university, I got a summer job as the single caretaker of a ~200 year-old church. I did everything from plastering the cracks in the walls to mowing the lawn. Anyhow, I also had to clean out the old coal bin. There wasn’t much left, but there was some. I also found newspapers from 1914 lining the bottom. That was pretty cool. There were no services there anymore, (no electricity or running water, either) so I was alone for 8 hours a day. I managed to read War and Peace at work that summer (I picked it because it was notoriously long, and I had so much down time when there wasn’t grass to be cut.) As far as minimum wage jobs go, it was pretty great. It was also a huge turn on for my girlfriend at the time who would visit in the afternoons sometimes. Haha!
Coal, I had my childhood home heated with a coal fire in winter. Crude oil I touched at an art exhibition. I also remember real creosote! Amazing smell.
As a kid, we used to go along the train tracks and pick up pieces of coal that tumbled out of the cars.
Coal heating was very common especially in the more remote regions of my area, until the late '70s.
