No one ever writes about basements, so I shall. This will not only be about basements, but about the mystery men in the picture. The basement in mind is that of the house behind the Victory flagpole in the ‘20s and ‘30s. The men in the picture could be the chorus line from River Dance—just kidding.
A basement is a wonderful thing! It holds a multitude of sins. It can be a place to stash your excess baggage, a playroom for kids or an apartment for your in-laws. The men in the picture could be moving men—no, wrong.
Going down stairs in the house behind the Victory flagpole, you would see an old-fashioned washing machine. You had to fill it by a hose attached to a faucet in the laundry tub. No automatic stuff here! If you were a genius, you could figure out how to get a load of laundry through the wringer, into the tub of blueing, then swivel it again into the rinse water without getting your fingers caught in the wringer! If you guessed the men in the picture were appliance salesmen—you were wrong.
A unique feature of the basement was a small room built in the southwestem corner. This was a pantry. There were many shelves loaded with home-canned goods. There was a bin on the floor filled with dirt, which preserved potatoes for winter eating. And there was a mysterious gadget sitting to the right of the door. It was a creation of tubes, vials and glass bottles, and looked like something from outer space. All I knew was that it had something to do with grapes, which we grew in the back yard. It was pretty much hush, hush, but I did hear the word “fermenting” floating around. No, the men in the picture were not rum-runners!
The most important thing in the basement was a monstrous furnace that ate coal like it was going out of style, and had to be fed many times a day. The heat went upstairs through huge ducts that looked like octopus tentacles. As time went by anew invention came out called an “Iron Fireman.” This modern miracle made it possible to feed coal into the furnace without the help of human hands! Heaven only knows how that worked!
By now you may have guessed who the men in the picture were—the men who kept us warm in the winter (so to speak). They were the men who brought coal to our houses, the hard-working coal men of Camden.
There were several main coal companies in town back then, the N.W. Fuel Co., the Cedar Lake Coal Co., and the Frarnham & Hawkins Fuel Co. Carl Thomas, son of Hattie Thomas, Camden’s baby nurse, worked at the Cedar Lake Fuel Co. for one year as a yard man. The main job there was to get the coal to people’s homes. First, the workers had to shovel the coal by hand from the huge piles left by a train, into dump-style trucks. They had no skip-loaders back then. When the trucks got to the homes, they dumped the coal into large wheelbarrows, having to do some hand guiding with a shovel. Then they pushed the wheelbarrow to the basement window where the coal chute was located and dumped the coal down the chute. It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it! (In the picture of the coal men, Carl Thomas is standing in the middle.)
Having breathed enough coal dust for awhile, Carl went to work for the N.W. Fuel Co. He worked there as a foreman and weigh master from 1925 to 1930.
Then he went to work at the Farnham & Hawkins Fuel Co., which had its beginning in 1927. It started out as a filling Station at 4312 Lyndale Ave. N. and added a coal yard in 1930 located at 4520 Lyndale Ave. N. They dealt in coal, wood, gas, oil and grease.
Starting there as a laborer, Carl Thomas became office manager of Farnham & Hawkins in 1933. His job consisted of taking orders, setting up deliveries, billing and collecting—in general, all the office work. He was a family man, born in 1902 and married to Beatrice Rocheleau in April of 1937 and had three children.
One of the two owners of the business was Carl Thomas’ brother-in- law, Clifford Farnham. He was related to an early pioneer of the area, Rufus Farnham, who owned a large amount of land between the Mississippi River and the Crystal Lake Cemetery. Clifford was born in 1898 and married Ruth Maria Thomas in June of 1921. They also had three children. Little is known about Cliff Farnham’s partner, Mr. Hawkins.
When gas heating replaced coal heating in the early ‘50s, the Farnham & Hawkins business closed down, but thanks to them for their good job of keeping us warm, and because of them we enjoyed many cozy, toasty winters!
Note: Thanks to Judy Thomas Halvorson, Betty Baier Farnham and Jim Farnham for their pictures and information!