[Source: Google search.]

Check the worm.

~~My father commenting to my older brother, Chris on any given winter evening in the 1950s and 70s.

For many years I lived with a worm in the cellar of my family home. But I feel confident that it’s not the kind of worm that you are imagining, my dear reader. No, indeed. Our worm didn’t crawl around, glacially slow, and leave a trail of slimy stuff in it’s wake. Fun fact: Did you know that a worm can be taught to do things when they are placed in a maze? It’s done with a mild electric shock if it (the worm) turns left instead right. After a few attempts and getting shocked, it ‘learns’ to turn right.

But that’s not the most amazing thing. If said worm is [WARNING: Icky stuff coming up] ground up and fed to another worm, the second worm will have the knowledge to turn right. Now that’s pretty interesting, I think you’ll agree.

But I digress.

No, the kind of worm we had was made of steel or iron and it lived in the corner of the large coal bin that, in turn, lived in our cellar. Coal was a relatively cheap way (and, more likely, the only way) that many homes were heated in the post-war years. My earliest memory was a bin full of fist-sized chunks of anthracite (or maybe bituminous). My father had to carry a shovel load from the bin a few feet to the furnace. No wonder his back wore out by the time he was middle aged.

Years later, into the 1960s, he made the switch to rice coal. It was granular and small. Maybe the size of a large snow pea.

That’s when the worm was installed. It’s basic shape was like this:

[Source: Google search.]

This item was placed at the bottom of the bin. It’s purpose was to “drag” the rice-sized coal into the firebox in the furnace where it was burned to provide heat that would fill the radiators in the bedrooms on the second floor. It worked fairly well. But much of the effective heat was lost between the firebox and my room.

I often buried myself under several heavy blankets.

What could go wrong?

Picture the 1950s Egan family sitting in the living watching Ozzie & Harriet on our blinking black and white set.

“Dad, I’m cold,” I would sometimes say.

“Chris, check the worm,” my father would reply.

You see, if the worm had been doing it’s dragging and it dragged all the coal around it, then no coal made it to the firebox in the furnace. In the Owego winters, the cold would penetrate.

So, my brother would go down and climb into the bin and shovel the coal from an undisturbed pile and cover the worm. In a few minutes, it was toasty warm in the living room.

Now, besides wrecking the atmosphere and hurling the world toward global warming, we also had the ashes to disperse. Where do you dump a large bucket full of the ash of the unburned rice coal?

On the driveway, of course.

I admit that I followed Chris around while he performed all these oldest son chores. I watched as he covered the worm (I did it myself several times) and I shivered on the front porch as he spread the ashes over the already dirty snow.

So there, my readers, is my experience with a worm in our cellar.

I think it would make a great horror story.