For all you bad boys and girls who got coal in their stockings this Christmas — and by that I mean pretty much everybody who reads this column — all I can say is, well that’s a damn shame, but you probably deserved it.
But I recently turned up an interesting old sales postcard from the Broadway Coal Company, which will at least tell you the various kinds of coal you received from Santa, and quite frankly the names of this stuff just fascinated me. I mean, at the Mansion the Lauderdales certainly never sullied their hands by actually dealing with coal, or the vendors who supplied it, but gosh-a-mighty I never realized there were so many different types.
If I had to choose, I’d probably go with “Broadway Special Stoker” because it just sounds so, well, special (though a bit pricey at $8.20 a ton). I also like the “Lewis Creek Nut,” “Arcola Egg,” and “High Grade Pea and Slack” just for their names.
What’s especially interesting — to me, anyway — is that Broadway, like so many other coal companies around town, also sold ice. Now coal and ice don’t seem to have a lot in common, if you ask me, and this kind of thing bothers me as much as that business of funeral homes operating ambulance services. There’s just something unnatural about it.