At noon, students lined up at the classroom door and filed out.  Many brought their lunch to school, and I can recall incidents that must have impressed me deeply.  On one occasion, our teacher noticed one of the girls carrying an exceptionally slim lunch packet, and asked her what was inside.  The answer was "Two butter breads."  On another occasion one little girl remarked to me about another "Don’t you think she always looks raggedy?"  Even at the height of the prosperous twenties, many families found life difficult. 

One of the things that eased the food problem was the school milk program.  Students were supplied a half-pint of whole milk and a couple of graham crackers for three cents.  Teachers collected "milk money" in the morning and at the proper time of the day designated "milk monitors" would go to the basement and bring up the crate of bottles.  So far as I can remember, I never participated in the program.  I don’t know why.  It may have been my parents’ perception that the milk was intended for poor children. Or perhaps it was because I was seriously over weight.  Once, however, I was designated to rinse the empty bottles at the sink in the school basement.

Since school was only five or six blocks from our house, I almost always walked home for lunch.  Exceptions occurred only when Monnie was engaged in something that took her away from home at lunchtime.  On those rare occasions, I either carried my lunch, or bought it from the little lunchroom across the street from the school.  The school itself had no cafeteria facilities.

Since I had been too young to remember, our family had never owned a car, but one Spring day I saw a shiny new automobile backing slowly up our long driveway.  (In those days, all garages stood well behind the house, where the stable used to be.)  Unknown to me, my parents had purchased a model T Ford: an open touring car, cloth top, no windows, three doors (no forward door on the driver's side. I still don’t know why.)  Black, of course - Ford painted all his cars black.  So, come to think of it, so did almost all other automobile manufacturers.

By modern standards the car had a bare interior.  The black dashboard featured an odometer that gave total mileage traveled and another that could be set to show trip mileage. Because, unlike most model-T's that had to be started with a crank, ours rejoiced in a specially ordered self-starter, there was also had an ammeter to show when the battery was discharging, The instrument panel definitely did not include a speedometer.

The car had no gas gauge, but the equipment included a kind of wooden ruler, marked in gallons.  To find how much gas you had, you inserted the ruler through the filler cap into the gas tank and read the contents at the wet line on the stick.  This involved greater difficulty than it sounds, for to eliminate the need for a fuel pump, the gas tank was located under the front seat. 

Putting the tank under the seat raised it above the engine, enabling the force of gravity to feed fuel to the carburetor.  This simple system worked fine on the level, but had an important drawback: when a driver with a partly filled tank attempted to climb a steep hill, the grade sometimes raised the engine higher than the gas outlet in the front of the tank.  Gas could not reach the carburetor, and the car would stall.  Experienced model T drivers knew the remedy: they turned the car around and climbed the hill in reverse.

The tank under the seat made filing it an elaborate process.  First, all the passengers piled out, and the front seat was lifted out of the car. The station attendant opened the filler cap and dipped in the "ruler" to determine how much gasoline was needed.  He then worked a hand operated "wigwag" that hoisted the gasoline into a glass cylinder on top of the pump.  Markings on the glass indicated the number of gallons it contained, and when the attendant had pumped up the required amount, he inserted the hose in the tank and the gasoline flowed down.

Even given a full tank and reasonably level terrain, however, getting anywhere still involved difficulty.  Few roads were even oiled, and still fewer were graveled. Most merely followed the dirt tracks of the horse-and-buggy days, deeply scarred with hard ruts when dry, and impassable mire when it rained.  In wet weather, drivers routinely put on chains to gain traction in the mud.  I remember one occasion driving with my father when we encountered a string of cars held up by somebody mired up to the hubcaps. My father by-passed the stalled traffic by turning into a stubble field next to the road.  Other motorists promptly followed his tracks, and the route through the field became more highly traveled than the muddy road. 

Rain posed problems in addition to mud.  The open car had no windows.  In heavy rain, the driver had to stop and install curtains that snapped into place, although often not before being drenched by the pouring rain. 

The vehicle boasted no heater, so the curtains stayed in place throughout the winter.  That helped keep out the cold, but not much, and passengers had to depend on heavy overcoats and thick "lap robes" to keep from freezing. 

Driving in the rain posed another difficulty. Standard equipment of Model-T Fords did not include windshield wipers, but my father had a hand operated wiper installed.  When enough rain accumulated on the windshield to interfere with vision, the driver could work the wiper with a crank that jutted from the top of the windshield.  In severe rain, the person in the passenger seat had to keep the wiper going.  The driver's hands were occupied with steering and with the accelerator, a rod mounted on the right of the steering column just beneath the wheel. He had no accelerator pedal to control speed.

Even in favorable weather, finding your way to where you wanted to go constituted a problem.  Reliable road maps did not exist, nor any system of road marking.  To make a trip of any length, you needed carefully worked out directions from the automobile club.  These instructed you to go to a familiar local spot and to set your trip mileage indicator to zero.  The directions then told you to "drive 2.7 miles and turn right at the church."  At "7.3" miles, you were told, "turn left at the clump of trees," and so on until, with luck, you reached your destination.  Only later did the state organize roads into a primitive system and set out route markers.  There were no special roadside markers; the earliest route indicators were numbers stenciled on telephone poles, on barns, or on whatever surface was available.

It took another decade for the state to begin to lay concrete highways.  These gave us all-weather roads, but with only two lanes, they still made for slow going.  Drivers had difficulty passing, and on days of heavy travel, highway traffic usually consisted of a series of long "parades" of cars caught behind particularly slow drivers. 

As you might imagine, we did not undertake travel lightly.  I remember going with my parents and a number of uncles, aunts and cousins, to visit Grandma Suits who still lived in my father’s birthplace, Butler, Illinois, sixty miles from Kirkwood. To get to Butler, four or five cars were formed into a caravan for mutual protection in case of breakdown.  The sixty mile trip took the entire day, with a stop for a picnic lunch.

Butler had progressed little since my father had left there twenty-five years before.  There was no electricity or gas.  Cooking was done on a stove fired by corncobs. Rooms were lit by kerosene lamps, which had to be carefully tended lest they smoke.  Water came from a well a few feet from the kitchen door.  Toilet facilities were a privy behind the chicken yard.  The only telephone in the village was in a little office where people went on the rare occasions they had to call. 
. 
We made the trip to Butler caravan style for protection against the hazards of driving, especially the threat of puncture. Thin tires were often the victims of nails and fragments of glass, forcing the driver to stop, jack up the wheel and fix the tire. Every car carried a patch kit. 

Tires did not mount directly on the wheel, but on separate rims which, in turn, slipped over the wheel.  Prudent drivers, of course, carried a spare already mounted on a rim, but the spare sometimes failed in turn.  When this occurred, the driver had to remove the damaged tire from the rim, pull out and patch the inner tube, then get the tire back onto the rim. Tire irons, to pry the repaired tire back onto the rim, came with a new car as standard equipment. 

The rim was not a solid circle of metal, but was cut so it could be partially collapsed when it was necessary to change the tire. A latch, located at the cut, kept the rim firm after the tire was mounted.  This latch was frequently rusted shut and difficult to open.  Motorists pounding on a rim to open a recalcitrant latch were a common roadside sight. On our excursion to Grandmother’s house, when one of the cars had to install the spare, the other members of the party placed it at the head of the caravan so drivers behind could help in case of another flat. 

Experienced drivers remained alert to many other difficulties.  The unreliable gasoline frequently contained water, which accumulated in the bottom of the gas tank, making it impossible to start the engine.  To drain the water, the driver reached under the car with a metal rod about two feet long with a little fixture on the end to open the drain cock on the bottom of the gas tank. Standard equipment like the tire iron, this rod also served to probe the gas tank to determine the depth of the fuel, for car owners invariably broke or lost the little wooden rulers designed for that purpose. 

Although no longer a novelty, automobiles had by no means replaced horse drawn vehicles. Everybody still took horses for granted. A cartoon in the local paper, supposed to represent an absurd view of things to come, showed children gathered at their big front window, gesturing wildly toward the street screaming, "Look, a horse!"  The caption read, "A glimpse of the future?" 

Two blacksmith shops graced the main street of our little town, and kids on the way home from school liked to stand at the big doors to see the sparks fly from the forge, to hear the smith pound the anvil and to watch him fit shoes on the horses. When the smith had leisure, we could sometimes get him to forge a ring from a horseshoe nail. 

Horses still brought all kinds of things to our home. Early in the morning, the milkman and his horse delivered milk door-to-door in glass bottles with a cardboard stopper. It was whole, unhomogenized milk, and the cream rose to the top.  On cold winter mornings, the milk would freeze and expand.  A little column of frozen cream, with the stopper on top like a little cap, would stand up out of the bottle..

The iceman daily brought ice.  Perhaps very rich people had electric refrigerators, but most families had an icebox. A card in the front window showed how much ice the household needed.  The iceman would grab a block of ice with his tongs, swing it onto the piece of burlap on his shoulder, carry it into our kitchen and put it in a compartment at the top of the icebox. The daily arrival of the iceman was a big event.  All the kids in the neighborhood would scramble on the back of the wagon and snatch ice chips to suck on. 

The water from the melting ice accumulated in a deep pan underneath the icebox.. Sometimes I was given the job of emptying the ice pan.  It was a tricky business.  I had to lift a flap near the floor in front of the box, slide out the pan and carry it to the sink.  The pan was always brim full, and if I pulled too suddenly, or tilted the pan in carrying it to the sink, the icy water splashed over my arm. 

We owned no radio in our early years in Kirkwood although we had had a crystal set when we lived in St. Louis.  A crystal set operates without batteries or other electric source, but still delivers enough power to activate a pair of earphones.  There was no loud speaker, but the earphones could be unclipped from the headset so two people could listen at the same time. One evening Monnie and I were listening to a broadcast of the St. Louis Symphony at which a guest ( I don’t remember who it was) was to perform a violin concerto with the orchestra.  The guest artist did not want his performance available to people who had not paid admission. But broadcasting was primitive in those days, and the station had no way to cut off the concerto from the rest of the concert.  The announcer solved the problem by asking the listeners to please not listen during the concerto!  I believe we didn’t own another radio until 1927 when we moved into our own house at 321 North Harrison Avenue.

When there was a special broadcast we wanted to hear, we had to find somebody who owned a radio with a loud speaker.  I remember going with my father to the local garage to stand with a number of men to hear the broadcast of the seventh game of the 1926 World's Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees.  In the seventh inning, with the Cardinals leading 3 to 2, the Yankees managed to load the bases.  With two out, the Yankee slugging second baseman, Tony Lazzeri, came to bat.  Rogers Hornsby, the Cardinal's playing manager brought Grover Cleveland Alexander out of the bull pen.   Alexander had been the winning pitcher the day before, and had celebrated generously.  As I learned many years later, he was, in fact, well hung over when he came in to pitch.  Be that as it may, I was there in that garage when Alexander struck out Lazzeri with the bases loaded to save the game and the series for the Cardinals.

My father had always been a baseball fan ? he had never played, but he told me he had once umpired a game.  When I was five or six, he tried to show me some of the rudiments, and pitched softly to me, but I complained that he "couldn’t hit the bat."  When I got a little older and understood how the game was played, he and I would play catch in the back yard, and he would throw up "fly balls" for me to run under and try to catch.  If I missed, he would call out "Er-ror!" I had my own baseball - a "Cock of the Walk," filled with packed sawdust. A couple of hits made it lopsided.  A couple more and the sawdust leaked out the seams.  My father bought a "real" baseball to play catch with me.  It cost a whole quarter, and since it was so expensive, it was not for everyday use.  It stayed on its special place on the mantle until he had time to play.

There was a period when every kid in our neighborhood sported a wooden sword, and engaged in wars, raids, duels and related swashbuckling. To get me in the game, my father made me a wooden sword out of a piece of lath.  I watched admiringly as he worked out on our little back porch to fashion it, but I don’t remember what I did with it when it was finished.

About this time I was involved an incident that I often reflect on in connection with the current controversy over hand guns.  A young couple from Texas (the man, I think, was the son of one of Mommom’s sisters) came to visit for a couple of days.  The morning after their arrival, Kingsley and I were playing in the living room, where there was an old fashioned glass front bookcase.  I happened to glance in the book case, and my eye caught sight of something hidden behind a shelf of books.  I didn’t know what it was, but it looked to me like the barrel of a pistol.  I immediately opened the glass door, pulled out the books, and there it was - a real, honest-to-God revolver, just like the two that Tom Mix wore in my favorite movies. Fortunately Monnie, who from the adjoining room could hear us clearly, rushed in and seized the weapon. 

t seems that our Texas cousin carried a revolver in his car and, unwilling to leave it in the car over night, and looking for a safe place away from the eyes of prying kids, had carefully hidden it behind the books in the bookcase.  It was a pure fluke that I stumbled on its hiding place.  But wherever there are guns around, flukes like this will happen.

When I was in the third grade, Mommom took me on a trip to Richmond, Washington, and New York.  The occasion was that my Aunt Fannie Lee had commissioned a portrait of my great grandfather, Judge Halyburton, and had arranged to have it hung in the Federal District Courtroom in Richmond.  Those in charge of the dedication ceremony wanted the oldest living male descendent of Judge Halyburton to unveil the portrait, and that was me.

Now by the time I had reached the third grade, I had become a very timid child. Once, the music teacher asked each child in the class to stand in front of the room and sing a song of his own choice.  When it came my turn, I tried to escape by the claim that I couldn’t think of anything suitable.  But when all the other children had performed, the teacher made me go up there and sing like the others. 

The point is that I knew that this unveiling ceremony in Richmond would require me to get up, all alone, in front of a roomful of strangers and do God knows what. And that was simply terrifying. 

The entire trip was a personal nightmare, but there was no way out.  Mommom and I rode to Richmond in a Pullman car, sleeping in a birth at night, riding on the made-up seat during the day, taking meals in the dining car.  In those days railroad dining cars served fabulous meals, but I have no recollection of what we ate - I was much too nervous to pay attention.  In fact, the only clear recollection I have of the train trip was that, as the train crossed a small stream, a woman in the seat across the aisle referred to the "crick." we had just passed.  It struck me as odd that a well dressed woman would employ what I considered illiterate speech.

At any rate, we reached Richmond and stayed with Aunt Fannie Lee. 
Shortly, the terrible day arrived. Mommom and Aunt Fannie Lee dressed me in my Sunday best and dragged me to the ceremony in a taxi.  We entered the courtroom and were ushered to reserved seats in the front row of the spectators’ section, just behind the rail.  Judge Halyburton’s portrait was hanging to the left of the bench, high on the wall, covered with a cheesecloth veil from which dangled a string.  Since the organizers of the ceremony had no idea of the size of the child who was to perform, the string led down to a straight chair so the tiny tot could clamber up to it, if necessary.  The courtroom was jammed. There were no vacant seats.  All these strangers!  And I still had no clear idea of what I was supposed to do.

The judge had taken his seat on the bench and was about to begin the ceremony, when a functionary of some kind, a man clearly at home in the place, entered the courtroom through a door behind the bench.  A glance told him that there were no seats to be had in the spectators’ section, but he spied the chair under the portrait and, comfortable as he was with the courtroom setting, strolled over and sat in it.

He was unaware of what he had done until the veil, pulled off the portrait by the unveiling string, draped itself over his head.  At that, he jumped up in confusion and hurried from the courtroom, pawing wildly at the cloth. 

I was off the hook!  Never in my fondest dreams could I have conjured up such a conclusion to my troubles.  The presiding judge made a few appropriate remarks, in the midst of which Mommom prodded me and whispered, "Stand up."  I stood, beaming widely, and nodded at the judge, to a patter of polite applause.

As we exited the courtroom, my rescuer met us in the corridor and apologized for having spoiled my "great occasion."  I thought he was the finest man I had ever met. 

In 1927, when I was in the fourth grade, my parents bought a house at 321 N. Harrison, corner Washington Avenue.  At that time, Harrison Avenue was a finished asphalt street, but Washington Avenue was covered with loose crushed limestone, with no curb.  A mud ditch ran down each side of the street. 

Our "new" house was already fifty or sixty years old, a large, east facing, white colonial structure which had probably been the only house in the area when it was built. If I remember correctly, Dad paid about $2,000 for the house.  (It was sold after my father’s death and was resold in 2000 for a price of  $450,000) 

The ground floor consisted of four large rooms off a central hallway: on the left as you entered from the front door was a living room with a bay window at the front and a fireplace at the back.   Directly opposite on the right was the dining room .  The stair to the second floor occupied the right half of the hallway just past the door into the dining room.  The room behind the living room, always designated as the "play room" was set aside for us kids.  There were no limits to the activities permitted in the playroom, but any rough play anywhere else in the house was met by the stern admonition, "into the play room with that stuff."   Behind the dinning room stood a large colonial kitchen.  Every room in the house, upstairs and down, was furnished with a fireplace, but except in the living room, they were plastered over, and only the mantels gave evidence of their existence. 

A door at the end of the hallway led into a small shed like addition, always called "the back room."  This little room sported its own chimney and had probably originally served as a summer kitchen, but it now contained the household fuse box, a wash basin, and, built into one corner, a downstairs toilet. It also featured a floor-to-ceiling tool cabinet which my father had had built.  In addition, the back room gave access to a large pantry for storage of canned goods and such.  In the summer, we kids routinely brewed and bottled root beer in the back room and stored the bottles on a shelf in the pantry.  The  back door to the house exited from the back room. 

There was no basement under this little back room, only a crawl space accessed from small trap door outside the house.  Later, we used this crawl space as the den for a pair of rabbits.  These rabbits were the central part of our sex education.  I guess my father figured that direct observation was superior to stories about the birds and the bees. Although the rabbits did what rabbits do, frequently and with enthusiasm, no offspring were ever forthcoming.  Why, I never understood

The back room also figured in an addition to Moneys reputation as an eccentric mother.  Several years after we had moved in, the top of the back room chimney showed cracks and other signs of serious damage.  Thinking the structure unsafe, Monnie asked us to tear it down, and all the kids went to work enthusiastically.

Now, like most chimneys, the one in the back room extended through the ceiling, and as we took out the bricks, it quickly became apparent that dismantling the

chimney was going to leave a sizable hole in the roof.  Confronted with this, we sent one of the younger kids into the house to deliver the information to Monnie, and to ask for additional instruction. 

As it happened, Monnie was talking on the telephone to a women who already had misgivings about the way our parents raised their children, and felt that the Suits kids were a wild undisciplined lot. Monnie paused in her conversation to hear the urgent message, then, realizing that her presence was needed at the site, she excused herself calmly.  "I'm afraid Iíll have to go," she said,  "my boys are outside taking down the chimney, and I'm afraid its going to leave a hole in the roof."

As you came up the stairs to the second floor in the new house, you found yourself facing the front in a hallway just over the downstairs hall. (The stairway made a 180 degree turn at a landing part way up.)  On your right  (that is, on the south side of the house) were two large bedrooms.  The one in the front, just over the living room, was originally our parents’ bedroom, but was later shared by Kingsley and me.  I don’t remember who first occupied the bedroom at the rear, but it later became our parents’ room. 

Just at the top of the stairs, a second hallway led to the left, giving access to a small corner bedroom. I later occupied the corner room for a time, but when Mommom lived with us, it was always her room.  The only bathroom lay off this short hallway midway between the stairs and the corner room.  Although the single bathroom had to serve the entire family  (seven people when we moved in, nine after our youngest brother was born and Mommom came to live with us.)  I don’t remember any substantial traffic problems.  In retrospect, I suspect that the smooth operation was probably because all the children were boys. Our individual needs were seldom time consuming, and besides, two or three of us could occupy the room at the same time.  In case of emergency, resort could always be had to the toilet in the back room downstairs.

The two upstairs hallways bounded the remaining second floor room, a large bedroom in the northeast corner of the upstairs.  This room, always called "the dormitory" even after most of us had left home, contained cot like beds, and all five of us kids slept there. 

We were all in bed there on December 1, 1927 when our father appeared and announced that we had a new baby brother.  We were all elated. What was the baby's name?  My father explained that he had no name as yet, but suggested he be called "Bill" because he had arrived on the first of the month.  That evening, however, Monnie sent word from the hospital that she had completely run out of boys’ names, and asked us for suggestions.

I had always been uneasy with my parents proclivity to give us unusual names:  As "Daniel," I had barely escaped being named "Dandridge."   Dad didn’t want any son to be named after him.  He thought two identical names in the family created unnecessary problems of identification.  He didn’t want a family with a "Junior," or a "Big Hollis" and "Little Hollis," but there was another way I could be named after him. Although Dad’s name was "Hollis," his father always called him "Dan," so Dad suggested that by naming me "Dan" they would, in a way, name me after him.   This notion fitted right in with Monnie’s ideas. "Dandridge" was her middle name, and she was quite proud of it  (she always signed herself "Dorothy D. H. Suits), so the name "Dandridge" would bind me to both sides of the family. Unfortunately, she also wanted to bestow on me the middle name "Burbidge," but "Dandridge Burbidge" would be an excessive burden for a kid.  As Dad remarked, "at school the other kids will say "Dandridge Burbidge garbage."   So Monnie compromised with the name "Daniel." 

My next brother, however, did not get off so easily, for they named him "Kingsley Scott," and Monnie went even farther by registering him in school as "K. Scott."  Our next brother was given the family name "Gwynn," and one of the twins was "McCawley." 

Anyhow, I took Monnie’s request for ideas as a chance to convince her to give our new baby brother a real, honest-to-God, guy's name, and I set about compiling a list that included "Joe," "Charlie," and several other names I considered suitable. 

And one more: As a nine-year-old, I was fascinated by Boy Scouts, and I gulped down all the Boy Scout books available from the public library. It happened that the story I was reading at the time featured a patrol leader named "Thad" whom all the other Scouts in the book admired and lookedup. So when I submitted the list of suggested names, I included "Thad," along with the other "regular guys’" names.   Dad duly delivered my list to Monnie, and as he reported to me next evening, "she saw the name ‘Thad,’ and immediately said, ‘That's what we'll name the baby.’"  So, thanks to my efforts to provide him with a "real guy's" name, our youngest brother rejoices in the name of  "Thaddeus." 

Extensive remodeling had been done before we moved in to the "new" house. Hardwood floors replaced the old pine flooring, ceiling light fixtures were installed in every room, and the windows were equipped with new full length screens!  Window screens in the old house were old and full of holes.  At one point, Mommom bought a sewing awl and sewed screen wire patches over the holes, but mosquitoes were always a problem.  In addition, the old screens covered only the lower half of the window, which made it impossible to let down the window from the top during torrid summer nights 

Every window in the new house was also equipped with functioning shutters.  This was important, because the summer heat was severe. Indeed, the British consul in St. Louis received tropical pay, and it was not unusual to read in the paper of people dropping dead of heat exhaustion during a summer hot spell.  Remember, this was before the days of home air conditioning (even in movie theater's air conditioning was a rare treat) and the ability to close the shutters on the south side of the house helped, if not to keep the house comfortable, at least saved us from keeling over. 

The shutters alone were far from enough protection, however, and the torrid summer days were particularly hard on Monnie.  She finally took refuge in the cellar.  In place of a full basement, the house had only the underground space that was deemed necessary back in the days when it was constructed.  This consisted of two small rooms.  One, lying directly under the kitchen, had probably served as a root cellar for winter storage of vegetables, while shelves along the interior wall doubtless held jars of home preserved food.  Light came from a window high in one outside wall.  An opening in the other outside wall gave onto three or four steps that led to a slanted cellar door.  The walls of  the room were the quarried stone foundation of the house, without plaster or other interior finish.  Overhead a single light bulb hung from the bare beams supporting the kitchen floor.  The air was dank and a little musty, but we delighted in the underground temperature.  To this room, Monnie repaired with a folding bridge table and some chairs.  At one point we even had an old bedspring and mattress in place. 

The room became a retreat not only for us, but for many of the neighbor kids.  We read, talked, argued, and played checkers and chess, and when there were enough kids, cards.  Michigan Rummy and Hearts were favorite games, sometimes Poker (strictly for chips) and, as we got older, Bridge. 

An assortment of animal life also enjoyed the environment of the cellar.  Once we found large ants had taken up residence behind the shelves.  Monnie, concerned that they might be termites, looked up an entomologist and took him a sample of the beasts.  He declared them completely harmless ants and suggested that we leave them where they were.  Monnie, always partial to insects, did not disturb them.  In return, they never bothered us.  Ultimately, they went away.

On another occasion, a black widow spider spun a heavy web in the far corner of the room.  About the size of a marble, shiny black with a red hourglass mark on what would pass as her belly, she stayed quietly in her nest and watched us.  We stayed away from that corner and left her to manage her affairs alone.  Like the ants, she eventually departed. 

The other small room in the basement was at the foot of the stairs, directly under the playroom.  The space was mostly taken up by the furnace and an adjoining coal bin, usually full of coke, which burned cleaner than coal.  When I grew a little older, one of my chores was to tend the furnace.  I had to shovel in coke when necessary, and if I neglected the duty, the fire would go out and had to be restarted. 

Although coke burns hotter than coal, it is more difficult to get started, but I devised a way to get the fire going in short order.  We owned an Electrolux vacuum cleaner, and I discovered that by detaching the hose from the air intake in front of the machine and plugging it into the exhaust at the back, I could obtain a strong blast of air. By playing this blast directly on the struggling flame, I could get the furnace burning brightly almost instantly.

Of course, a blast of air directed toward a coke fire converted the furnace into a roaring forge, and one time I applied the air blast with such vigor that I burned completely through one of the cast iron grates on which the fire rested.  I never told my father, and he must have wondered how a cast iron furnace grate managed to burn in half. 

In addition to the furnace, the basement room boasted a gas hot water heater.  I don’t know whether automatic water heaters had yet been invented, but at any rate, they were not available in old houses like ours.  When somebody wanted a bath (there was no shower) he had to go down the basement stairs and light the gas heater.  Nor did the heater have any thermostatic control.  When the water had reached the desired temperature somebody had to go down the stairs again and shut off the gas, otherwise the water in the tank would boil.  The hot water tank would thump and pound, and anybody who turned on a hot water tap anywhere in the house was exposed to a blast of steam.   We were careful, of course, but on occasion the tank did overheat.  It's a wonder nobody was scalded.