No Stupid Questions

When I was a kid, for some reason I really wanted coal for Christmas and I was diappointed that only the bad kids got it. My parents decided to mess with me one year by hiding all my actual presents and only putting a piece of coal in my stocking. I was thrilled and thought it was so cool. I have no idea why I thought it was cool, I was a weird kid. My parents gave up on the joke before I even realized that none of the presents under the tree had my name on them. I was entirely happy with the piece of coal.

Ironically, it's become one of my favorite Christmas memories and it's one of few presents I still have as an adult.

OP humblebragging about never making the naughty list.

Growing up we had a coal fire in the sitting room and a coal range in the kitchen. The range was a wet-back, so it heated water as well. Lovely and cosy in the winter but sweltering in the summer. We had a special coal shed. The coalman would carry big sacks of coal in on his shoulder and empty them into the bin. Coal on one side, firewood and kindling on the other. Mum had the knack of setting the flues just so at night to bank the fire, so that in the morning it just needed a couple of sticks of kindling on the embers to get it going again.

The range was a bastard to cook on. The spot directly over the firebox was hottest. If you needed it even hotter you could lift a cover off - it had a second ring outside that for bigger pans. Moving along from the hot spot towards the chimney were cooler sections. For the lowest heat you moved the pan to the back. There was so much shuffling around! And don't get me started on the oven. And the constant film of soot, the gusts of ash when you shovelled in coal from the scuttle. Gross. I love my induction hob and electric oven.

As a child, I used to live alongside a heritage steam railway in the south of England. Much of the engineering/restoration works was accessible, along with huge sections of the way. I'd quite often find lumps of Welsh Steam Coal that had fallen off the engines. It has a very peculiar and distinctive (yet strangely pleasant) smell in its unburnt form.

I'm old enough to remember people actually using it for heating at home!

We use coal for bbq here

Having grown up in a house without central heating, coal ovens in the kitchen and the living room were the two points of warmth in the winter. I have learned to light the coal oven before I was old enough to attend school. And whenever coal was delivered, I was tasked to help moving the coal to the coal shack behind the house.

Dirty business, 0/10, can't recommend.

In university, I got a summer job as the single caretaker of a ~200 year-old church. I did everything from plastering the cracks in the walls to mowing the lawn. Anyhow, I also had to clean out the old coal bin. There wasn't much left, but there was some. I also found newspapers from 1914 lining the bottom. That was pretty cool. There were no services there anymore, (no electricity or running water, either) so I was alone for 8 hours a day. I managed to read War and Peace at work that summer (I picked it because it was notoriously long, and I had so much down time when there wasn't grass to be cut.) As far as minimum wage jobs go, it was pretty great. It was also a huge turn on for my girlfriend at the time who would visit in the afternoons sometimes. Haha!

I see a lot of "yes" here, so let me chime in with: no, I don't think I ever have.

Yes, I've held coal and touched crude oil.

Coal was common along the railway and I would pick up chunks cause it was interesting.

Crude oil I saw / touched because I would go along with my dad who would measure the tank level for oil on the see-saw style pumps

Yeah, my house (built in the 1940s) originally had a coal-burning fireplace. Even though it had been renovated (and the fireplace and coal delivery chute removed) before I bought it, there were still a few stray pieces of anthracite in the basement.

We heated my childhood home with coal until I moved out as an adult.

Here's a picture I took of the inside of the coal burning stove when visiting my parents in 2014, I'm not sure why but the heat made it turn purple for some reason 🤷‍♂️

I live in the valleys of south Wales. Walk through old coal mining areas and you'll occasionally find lumps of it on the ground.

Yes. I still have a chunk. My brother worked at a mine for a summer. Guess what I got the following Christmas? He thought he was hilarious...

Sure! My stepfather was a coal miner and brought home several fossils in coal when I was a kid. Ferns, tree bark, etc. I’ve lost track of them over the years, unfortunately.

I’ve actually been in a coal mine too. In my hometown, they have a decommissioned mine where they give tours.

Closest I've ever seen outside of pictures of coal or digital representations of it would be charcoal, for grilling. Otherwise, I've never seen it, unless I saw it once in a geology class I did in the fall and don't remember it.

I don't know whether it was you, but I have responded to this same question on Lemmy before.

Yes. We had a coal fire when I was growing up - in the 60s and 70s -, so it was an everyday thing during the winters.

Me and my sister got coal for christmas one year we were extra annoying. Mother just brought in some from the grill bag, i know she wanted to make a point but my older sister litteraly said oh we can just grill out with this! Made our mom sooo mad. It didnt help we had copious amounts of gifts from our grandparents so it didn't matter to us. We were mostly good kids, just brats. Besides the time we attacked the mail man, I believe that was the coal year.

It's a dark rock...for reasons I have lumps of coal embedded in the concrete of the basement

https://postimg.cc/FkjfYPV9

I have no idea how they got there. Probably the coal used when they wete pouring the concrete left there. Again, no idea

We used it to heat our house growing up. But only on the very coldest nights, normally we'd use wood since the coal would actually put out too much heat. This was the 80s through early 90s in New York state, us.

You've never used charcoal for a grill?

Yeah, was walking over a bridge over some train tracks as a train was going by, had hopper cars full of coal.

Yes. There isn't much coal where I'm at but I've stumbled over it a few times while mucking around in the woods, streams, or whatever. I've even seen anthracite on the beach that either came from nearby or fell off a ship.

Touch, not sure. See, certainly. I have seen steam locomotives operate many times in my life because I live in a country where those are still in use as tourist attractions.

Went to a open cast lignite mining operation once. The scales are quite impressive. Once standing at the bottom of the pit vision of the surrounding landscape just fades and you feel a bit like in a wasteland of sorts.

open cast mine

I assume many people are familiar with hydrocarbon gas for cooking or heating. Coal can also be converted to liquid or gas fuel form chemically but the process is quite complex and usually not economical.

Then there's crude oil. Never been near it but its ubiquitous in its refined forms, just go to a gas station.

EDIT: the coal typically used for barbecue (charcoal) is made from wood and is different from the stuff mined from the earth. Many people seem to not know this.

Yes, drive through West Virginia and you'll see seams of coal in the parts of the mountains they cut for highways.