On
Friday nights the country folks would come into Phoenixville to do their
shopping. While the shopping was being done, the children would be taken
downtown to sit and marvel at the fire and sparks erupting from the Open Hearth.
From
the stacks, licking tongues of orange flame haunted the night, and more
than one child's imagination saw the devil dancing on the rim of the stacks.
A
favorite sight to witness was when the dinky trains would bring the
glowing
red hot pig iron out from the Open Hearth. Stories of men falling
into the molten
steel would cause the children to shiver. Stories of kittens being thrown
into
the molten steel made more than one little girl cry.
Children would beg their parents to
drive by the scrape piles so to see the
big electric magnet pick the scrap off the train gondolas. I myself would
pray on the way to Phoenixville, that a Locomotive would be crossing the
road, stopping all the cars.
In grade school the children
studied the making of steel, drawing the different
types of Blast Furnaces, how coke was produced, and the endless uses of steel.
Whether midnight during a blizzard, Sunday morning church, or while sitting
in school, the sounds of steel being made could always be heard. Even from
Kimberton, if a child was awaken scared from a nightmare, the sounds of
the
Iron Company would comfort them, knowing that men were awake and making
steel.
James E. Frizzell
Post Office Box 595
Kimberton, Pennsylvania 19442
date posted: April 10, 2001
last revised:
Thursday, October 19, 2006