Thank you, Lord, for 63-year-old Ed, who solved the mystery of the old, abandoned bins.
The purpose of this old, abandoned wooden structure along the side of the road baffled us for years; and lucky me! As I stopped to photograph it today, a man hobbled slowly out of a nearby building, shuffled over, and solved the mystery!
He told me he worked at this “shaker house” many years ago and that workers delivered coal from nearby strip mines to the shaker house where “big, husky guys” like him swung 50-pound sledge hammers to bust up the largest chunks before the coal went onto 3 different sized screens. The screens shook, sorting the coal into 3 different sizes and into 3 bins below where workers used machinery to load it into waiting trucks for delivery to power plants as far away as Buffalo and local homes to fuel their furnaces. He believed the shaker house stopped shaking in the 1980s.
He called the large pile beside the structure “poop” or “slack.” Primarily coal dust, it came from the first bin and stands to this day as evidence of this operation.
I’m tagging this image for this week’s 52-Week Challenge: Forsaken (abandoned and forgotten).
What a moment to come across someone who could solve that mystery for you! Fascinating, and such a nice photo that will likely become historical information in time!
