Story Time

When my father was in his late teens he worked delivering coal. It was the end of the 1950s or maybe the early 1960s and he was just a regular kid trying to earn a few bucks to get some hot rod magazines or baseball cards. He told me once of a time that he and his boss, Mr. Burns, went out on a delivery one winter day and came upon a World War I vet, confined to a wheelchair, living in a hovel with his blind wife. They could not afford coal and my father saw the wife peeling the wallpaper to put into the furnace. My father said that Mr. Burns was absolutely appalled and payed for the supply of coal for them. He told the couple that he would continue to bring them coal when he made his delivery to the building. They thanked him profusely and Mr. Burns held up a hand in protest and left with my father immediately. My father said that he believed Mr. Burns felt shame for how a man who once served his country could be found living in such a state. My dad asked if he could pay for the next delivery, but Mr. Burns never answered him. My father never went back on that route with his boss, he was placed with someone else on the crew, but this story stuck with my father over fifty years later and the image of an elderly blind woman peeling wallpaper never left him. The image now resides in me.