When I was growing up we had a coal furnace.  At night my dad would stoke that baby up to the point that I thought he was going to burn the house down.  Of course, coal doesn't fit into a nice little underground line so that it gets to your house without interruption.  Every so often the coal guys would come with their truck and dump another load of coal down into the coal bin down the basement.  That wouldn't be a bad deal in the summertime, but deliveries in the middle of winter meant you had to shovel (did snowblowers exist back then???) a path wide enough to fit a dump truck through so that they could back up to the house.  Geez, I'm starting to feel old when I tell the "when I was a kid" stories.  At least I don't have any stories about walking 5 miles to school --------- up hill, both ways 😁