Reorganisation · Level 1

The empty section had always been a playground for the neighbourhood kids. When they found an abandoned car on it one morning with one flat tyre and the seats torn, it quickly became a piece of playground equipment. They imagined they were fleeing from bandits in it or they were the bandits on the run, or they were just driving along and singing. They checked the engine, pulling out wires and loose bits of metal.

Towards evening, two men came with a spare tyre to put on the car. One of them had had a puncture the night before and had left his old car there until he could come back for it.

The Hansons had a huge spring clean and got rid of what they saw as their junk. They cleaned out cupboards, shelves, boxes and the garden shed. They threw out anything that was broken and put the rest in a garage sale. There were books and toys that were no longer used. There were several kitchen gadgets that they'd forgotten they had. There were some garden tools and even a garden gnome.

People came from all over town. They knew that bargains could be found at garage sales. The Hansons were very happy just to see it all go.

When I was young, people would buy coal for their fires from the coalman who transported it through the streets on the back of a truck. The coalman hauled the sacks of coal from his truck onto his shoulders and carried them into the house. He wore a hard wearing leather jacket for this work.

Coalmen had to be strong. This was because a sack of coal weighed one hundredweight. One hundred weight is about fifty kilograms - and that is heavy. There was always lots of dust from the coal. This meant that the coal men had blackened hands, faces and clothes.

I remember that we would get three hundredweight of coal delivered at a time. One of the kids would run out to the street and wave the slow moving truck down. Then kids from other families would arrive and we'd all put our orders in. Not many people had a phone so you couldn't just ring your order through to the coal office.

In our case, the coal was taken to the basement of the house and emptied into a huge wooden coal bin.

From the age of eight I had the job of filling the coal scuttle* from it, and carrying it to the fire. This would have to be done two or three times a night.

* scuttle: a container for holding and carrying coal.