'COALBAGS': REMEMBERING THE COAL DELIVERIES...

Coalbags

Green-cabbed truck would rattle heavily

Up the incline that was my road;

Few parked cars then, through which to weave.

Its lumbering low gear hauled

Those dull, dingy, darkened bags of weighed coal

To a jolting halt and thrilled me, then so naïve…

I was told to stand at a window,

Yet also not to move the ‘nets’ and count,

To confirm that ten bags had been carried

From deck to coalhouse on backs,

With laborious, stooping gaits of suffering,

While I delighted in my peeping and tarried…

There was a ten second delay

As each coalman, blackened,

Vanished into my side-entry, out of view;

Until a resounding crunch, like thunder to me,

Announced a bucked load, thrown into the dusty pile,

The approach marked by blackened sole of blackened shoe…

The fascination was the leaning of bulging bags;

Giant, grimy hundredweights, square and tough

On the deck, dragged singly by one fellow,

Across for another to lever onto aching back;

Then the slack was swept to a corner,

As “How many’s that?” my mother would bellow… 

The emptied, flattened coalbags were thrown

Neatly onto a rear edge of the deck,

Like a huge stack of pliable wall-tiles,

By a relieved labourer with scary white eyes,

Which stared appealingly from dust-caked face;

Yet mother risked two clean cups for tea and drew sparkling smiles…

Pete Ray

Before the coal lorries I knew...

My uncle Les worked for Aldridge’s, the firm which delivered our coal, hence mom’s unlikely kindness…