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Wearable Art by Shirley Cunningham
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When I was five years old, my family moved from our little white frame house with the red brick pillars on Brook Avenue into a large four story white frame and stucco on Columbus Avenue that would be my home until I married. The house was warmed on cold winter days by two radiators, a floor furnace and fireplace in the downstairs, and a series of space heaters in the four bedrooms of the second floor. In the sitting room of the second floor was an additional fireplace. Coal burned in the fireplace of this large family room where we spent most of our time in the winter.
Each cold winter morning, most of the time before we awoke, Mama would descend into the basement and fill the coal bucket with shiny black chunks. She would then carry the heavy bucket back up the three flights of stairs, The starting of the fire I had often observed. First came wads of newspaper, then a layer of kindling, then the small chunks of coal. A match was struck and thrown into the steel basket holding these special ingredients. The paper blazed, the small pieces of wood burned, and the coal began to glow. The heavy oak door to the hallway was closed and the room soon became warm.
The basement where the coal was kept, with its damp smell of brick and dust, was for me a dark and scary place. There was no handrail along the narrow wooden stairs and the only light was a single hanging bulb, turned on with a pull string dangling somewhere in the dark where I couldn't reach it. I didn't venture down those steps very often.
But one day a year in the fall, however, was coal delivery day. Then my fear of the basement depths was overcome by curiosity. On that day a big noisy truck would pull up in the driveway under the covered side entrance of the house and a man with his clothes and face smudged with black would climb out of the truck and crank open the heavy steel door near the side entry way. When I heard the screech of the unoiled hinges, I'd run to the basement stairs. Stopping halfway down, I would stand and watch the glittering dark chunks tumble through the chute, thudding into a gigantic mound against the wall. From that memory emerged a study in black entitled "Coal." |
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