The Year Lorraine Brought Home Coal for Christmas

Chicago was extremely cold that year when Lorraine walked home from school. She watched the coal trucks passing by, stopping at times to dump a load of coal into some family's basement, some lucky family that would be warm this cold Christmas season.

Her own family was poor, fatherless, living in the basement of a fire damaged house which the original family abandoned. It was a windowless hovel, with boards nailed over the broken panes where once glass kept out the cold.  Lorraine walked more than 3 miles to school from her house, mostly because the family had moved after being evicted from their former home. She liked her school, had friends there, and didn't want to start over. So, she walked, in nice weather and in terrible weather, like today, when the snow swirled around the streets of Chicago and blew hard pellets of ice into her face.

Since her father's death, just after she was born, she knew only poverty, hunger, and could do little more than hope for a better tomorrow. But today all she thought about was staying warm, not freezing to death as some people did every year at this time.  Her sister Eleanor worked, as did her eldest sister Virginia, and the money they brought home helped keep food on the table. But even with her mother working 16 hours a day, every day but Sunday, they did not earn enough for a real home, or for any presents this year at Christmas.  Brother Bill was away this winter, seeking to make some money to help out his family, but he had had no success finding a job.  They hadn't heard from him for two months now. Not a word.

Lorraine happened to see that as the coal trucks went along they occasionally dropped a bit of coal on the street, so, carefully, cautiously, she went to pick one of the black lumps from the snow, brushed it off and placed it into her home-made book bag where she kept her most personal treasures.

She happened upon another black lump of coal standing out against the new whiteness of freshly fallen snow, and again saved it, thinking that at least they might have a few coals to burn in the furnace tonight.

Lorraine diverted from her usual route home when she saw the coal truck turn a corner, drop a few more coals on the street, and gleefully, she thought she might actually pick up enough coal to make her mother happy this night.  Excited, and without watching where she was going, Lorraine ran after the truck and passed into the coal yard without noticing what she was doing.

Abruptly, a guard grabbed her and dumped out her bag. "Thief!" he shouted at her, shaking her violently, so much so that her eyes wept bitter, frozen tears.

"I found them!" she started to say, but was dragged up a long set of stairs into a warm office where an old man sat at a huge desk. He eyed her as the guard explained he found her stealing coal from the yard.

Lorraine was too frightened to reply at first, and the old man, the one the guard respectfully called Mr. Peabody, stared hard back at her. "Why are you stealing my coal?" Mr. Peabody demanded.

Finally, Lorraine gathered her courage and spoke up. "I found them on the street, sir. So I took them." She explained that her family had no money, lived in a burned out house, and had to huddle together at night just to stay warm.

Mr. Peabody listened carefully, his face remaining as hard as winter ice in Chicago. But at the end he put the coal back into her sack, got her mother's name and address, and told her to go.  The guard escorted her roughly back to the gate and closed it as she left. "Don't ever let me see you here again!" he shouted. Lorraine, still forcing back tears, went home.

She told her mother, Josephine, and for a time Josephine was worried that the police might come.  They were living in this ruined house but they were there illegally, and the police might force them into the cold, dark night.  Most people had little concern over another poor family left out in the cold.

Later there was a loud sound, much like a large vehicle outside the house. Josephine, Lorraine and her sisters worried that a paddy wagon had come for them. Everybody stared at poor Lorraine, who began to weep openly.  There was a knock at the door, and Josephine slowly went to open it.

She expected a policeman had come, but it was a workman covered with coal dust. "Mr Peabody sent me to deliver a load of coal, but I wasn't sure this was the right place." He looked around at the ruined house. "Are you Josephine Toms?"

"That's me," Josephine answered, still frightened at the intrusion.

"Well, Mr. Peabody said I was to deliver this coal free, so where is the coal chute?"

Josephine pointed to the chute and then backed away as the deliveryman went to unlock the hatch. "Enough here for a couple of months, I figure," he muttered as he went back outside and dumped an entire truckload of coal into the Toms' residence.

That cold winter in Chicago more than 100 people froze to death. Their bodies were often covered with drifting snow and weren't discovered until Spring.  But at one burned out house, where my mother Lorraine and her family lived for that Christmas season, Lorraine brought home a load of coal that was the best Christmas present any of my aunts and grandmother could remember.

Cheers this Christmas season, and may you be blessed by a random act of kindness.

Chef Jeff