Coal was still king when I was young
Perhaps it still is, but not as close to home
Steam locomotives ran day and night back then

In the smaller towns, coal still heated everything
Maybe even cooked your food
So it’s the smell, the smell of burning coal I remember most

A smell best smelled at night
When I was snuggled in a feather mattress
Best when it was cold and damp outside

When fog obscured the cone of streetlight I could see
Dampness made the smoke heavier somehow
One could almost taste it then

I remember all this best from grandma’s house
Close enough to the tracks to hear and smell
But her house was further from the tracks than most

You see, grandpa was the pharmacist, solid middle class
But even that made little difference, for the town was still quite small
A hundred yards beyond the tracks its full extent

The rumble of the passing train
Now that was more heard than felt in grandma’s house
Hers was well built, not like humble ones more near the tracks

There a picture of Jesus might rattle on the wall
And cracks draw tiny lines in all their plaster
The trains, they were blamed for that as well

But nothing could be done for that of course
Nor for the black soot that covered everything
Even fresh laundry hung upon the line

It seemed closeness to the tracks had but one advantage
For coal sometimes fell from hopper cars from the local mine
A mile long they were those trains, cars filled to very brim

After passing one often saw the old widow from the shack
And sometimes children too
Trudging home with half-filled scuttles

I too brought home some coal one day
A small lump I’d found along the tracks
But not just to grandma’s, she heated toasty warm with gas

It was to my city home that I would take it
That thing for which I had no use
My family too was middle class, our home was just as modern

Oh yes, coal was still delivered in the city
In blackened trucks with negro drivers
But only to the poor, of course

I got scolded for bringing home that coal I’d found
What were you thinking, my mother said
Putting that filthy stuff into your pocket

I’ve had to wash your pants twice now
And the shirts I’d washed with them too
Coal’s a filthy, nasty thing, I know that very well

At your age I had to stoke a coal stove
And endure its smell in my cloths and hair
And all throughout our house

Your grandma’s house, when I grew up
It was not so modern way back then
And coal heated everything that needed heating there

We heated the house with coal
We cooked with coal
We heated water for our baths with coal

To wash our clothes we had to boil water
For that we had a coal stove in the shed
And from where we had to carried heavy buckets to the cellar

Then we had to scrub those cloths upon a board
We had to crank them through a wringer, it took hours
And then the smoke would just get them dirty once again

I remember still the lesson that I learned that day
Things necessary to your life, well, you have no choice
And those thing might indeed be dirty and small bad

It is when you don’t need them any more
That’s when you see how bad they might have been
I wonder, will people some day that gas is dirty too

I learned as well that there is some bliss in ignorance
Of knowing not of those harsher things
In places that you love you filter out unpleasant fact

Love and happy memories, that’s all that one remembers
Not how over-soft and damp that feather mattress really was
But forever in your life, you’ll love the smell of coal