Father

Over the course of his lifetime my father drove his own coal trucks, he drove for the Frackville Block Company delivering cinder blocks, and he drove a beer truck for a local distributor. He also was a radio and TV repairman for quite a few years. He was a proud man and very opinionated.

Coal Delivery Truck

For many years my father drove his own coal truck. I remember he had a Diamond-T and parked it in the alley behind our house. He worked out of Mr. Rust’s coal yard in Morton, near Philadelphia. He would take his 19-ton trailer down to the coal yard a couple times a week. He would be gone most of the time delivering coal to the Philadelphia suburbs and usually stayed overnight in a small one-room building.

Mr. Rust owned the Morton Coal Yard and was my father’s boss. He also ran a boarding house along with a woman (not sure of the relationship if any) named Mrs. Roth. She cooked all the meals for boarders and cleaned house. When my father was there he would eat his meals with everyone else at very specific times. When I or my brother went with him, we ate there too. This is the odd part. Mr. Rust could not stand to have any leftovers and insisted everyone cleaned their plate. If there was anything left over, I mean gravy, Jello, peas, anything, even from someone’s plate, he would scrape it onto a dish and eat it himself!

Mr. Rust owned the house our family lived in beginning in 1942. Dad rented the house for many years. Out of the blue one year Mr. Rust sold the house to my dad for $100. Since Mr. Rust was so tight with money I can only guess he knew how much my father paid in rent and that’s probably all he owed.

The day before heading to the coal yard he would fill the truck at a local colliery, which locals referred to as a coal breaker. Depending of the size coal he needed; pea, nut, rice, stove, etc., he would partition the trailer accordingly and then unload it at the coal yard in different bins according to size. Then he would load up the smaller dump truck, I think it held four or five tons, and weigh it on the scale which was part of the coal yard. He would check in with Mr. Rust to log the exact weight. I remember sitting in Mr. Rust’s office and staring at this huge green safe. It had C. M. Rust in big letters. After Mr. Rust agreed the truck was at the proper weight for the scheduled deliveries, then it was ready to deliver to customers.

He could usually run a coal chute front the truck, to the window at their coal bin, raise the hydraulic truck bed, and it was delivered in minutes. There were situations where he couldn’t get close enough, or it was uphill, and I saw him unload it, one canvas bag at a time, walk up to the window to pour it down the chute. I don’t know how much those bags held but I know they were heavy. I helped a little but mainly I was down in the coal bin watching that things were OK there and shovelling it away from the chute as needed.

Beer Truck

He not only drove but loaded and unloaded for each delivery. He made trips to breweries in Brooklyn, New York and Baltimore, Maryland to pick up loads. He returned and unloaded the cargo. Then he would make deliveries to local beer gardens. That must have been hard for him to accept because he did not drink and didn’t think anyone else should. 

Radio and Television Repair Business

One thing that really impressed me about my father was he knew the coal business was going downhill and he did something about it. He enrolled in a National Radio Institute (NRI) home course to learn how to fix radios. Eventually it led to phonographs, car radios, and TVs. He knew nothing about electricity or electronics when he started, at least nothing more than a typical homeowner.

Initially he set up a shop of sorts in the attic. The bench went right across where the gable window is at the front of the house. You can barely make it out but its at the top right of the picture of him painting the coal truck. When a NRI lesson arrived he would study a section and send answers back for grading. As he progressed through each lesson, components would come through the mail and he would assemble them into a workable piece of electronics equipment. This included building all of his own test equipment using the kit components they sent. I remember the night he came running downstairs and asked us come up and listen to the radio he built. I thought at the time, and I still do, that was such a thrill that it energized him to continue.

Eventually he assembled a small black & white TV and his business was off and running. That’s when he tore off the back porch and shed and built his TV shop seen in the picture above. That’s also when we lost access from the cellar to the back yard through the trap doors. That was another thing that impressed me. He wasn’t a carpenter or handyman that I can recall but he did it—he built the shop himself. He did all of this in between trips to deliver coal.

He was only home a few nights each week but he stuck with it and it paid off. I use the term "paid off" loosely because I don’t think he ever made much money to spare. He sunk a lot of it back into his business for spare parts, schematics, and test equipment. He also felt he couldn’t charge people what he should have because he knew they couldn’t afford it. I think he was so generous that it hurt him in the end. I realize that he must have been dog-tired and believe that’s why he had little time for us growing up.

We had a 1949 two-door Ford sedan but transporting TVs was very difficult. His radio and television business was picking up. Somewhere along the way my dad got a 1953 Ford station wagon. Most repairs were made in the customer’s home but often he would have to bring the TV back to his shop. Many TVs were console models and transporting them required a vehicle with a tail gate so that’s why he got the station wagon. Often he would remove the chassis from larger console TVs but many were transported in the cabinet. I went with him to help with those that were too large for him to handle alone. It was often in the evenings and on weekends. He carried a large case full of vacuum tubes and spare parts to replace those that failed frequently.

When color TVs were becoming popular he had to purchase some test equipment because it was too complex to build. Eventually, TVs became more modular and troubleshooting was no longer possible to the component level. When a problem in a modular unit was suspected he would either order the part or go to Pottsville to an electronics supply store to pick one up. They were too expensive to stock and I think the evolution in technology is why he eventually gave up his business.

In order to repair radios and TVs down to the component level; resistors, capacitors, etc.. you needed access to a library of schematics. Dad kept up to date with all the schematics for radios, car radios, phonographs, and TVs. He kept them all in filing cabinets that eventually took up one side of his shop.

One final TV story. One of our neighbors was Mickey Sukana. He used to hang out in my dad’s shop. Mickey must have thought that repairing TVs was a good occupation because he soon started doing some repair work himself. When he ran into a problem he couldn’t solve he would ask my dad for help. He didn’t have much of a parts stock or a collection of schematics so he borrowed everything from Dad. Dad would sell tubes to Mickey at cost and then had to resupply his own stock. I don’t think he ever said anything to Mickey because he was a good friend.

When he decided it was time to quit, he just threw everything out, tubes and all. The sad part is that my cousin in Lewistown was repairing all sorts of electronic devices including radios, TVs, and jukeboxes and he would love to have had his parts stock. My father never gave it a second thought although he did feel badly about it later.

After cleaning out the shop of everything but the work bench, he bought an inexpensive pool table from Sears. I never knew he wanted one but every time we visited we shot a few games for fun.

Little Man’s Champion
My dad was not a tall man nor was he particularly well built, but he was strong. He couldn’t stand to see someone being taken advantage of, especially if they were the underdog. I recall one Sunday morning sitting on the front porch. We were waiting for the Sunday paper delivery. Sunday papers were delivered in a large green wagon pulled by hand. The wagon made stops at intersections and neighbor’s walked from their homes to the wagon. There was some sort of scuffle and my dad stepped in and nullified what looked like an over match.

Stubbornness

One thing for certain, my father was stubborn. Once he made his mind up about something there was no changing it. Logic went out the window so it was no use arguing with him. I recall talking to him about something on TV. It was a musician playing a guitar. I casually mentioned that it was a right-hander’s guitar and if a left-handed person played it they would have to reverse the strings. He insisted that was not the case and even though I demonstrated why that was, he stood his ground. That was the end of the discussion.

When the local bank said they would no longer return cancelled checks he walked right up to the bank and insisted they continue to send them to him. You see, my father had saved every check he ever wrote. He had a filing cabinet full of them which was discovered after he died.

Several relatives had lived with us over the years. My dad’s cousin Chester lived with us on more than one occasion. Chester was a retired military man. He was used to discipline and giving orders. Dad was just plain stubborn He did not want to take orders from anyone in his house. He showed me a list of things he wrote down about Chester that bothered him. It was sad but they really never discussed much so it allowed anger to build up to the boiling point.