The Book Journey That Started with a Lump of Coal
It’s getting close: In November I will publish my book, Poverty to Possibility: Snapshots from a Yorkshire Boyhood. It’s the story of my dad’s childhood growing up in a poor Yorkshire, England coal-mining community during the depression-era 1930s and World War II.
The origins of this writing journey started 50 years ago in Rawmarsh, Yorkshire, England. It was 1970, and I had just turned nine. We were visiting my second cousin Ernest Payne’s house. Fidgety and a bit bored by grown-up conversation, I wandered outside to explore Ernest’s small, cobbled back yard. I spotted a pile of coal there. Growing up in an oil-heated house in New England, I had never seen coal before. The black pile of it was something exotic to behold. I enthusiastically scanned it more closely, then selected and plucked a small piece of coal from the pile like it was a prize at a county fair.
With renewed enthusiasm, I headed back inside to show everyone the coal lump. When I asked Ernest if I could keep it, his expression was one of clear astonishment. He had seen more than his fair share of it. A retired coal miner whose wife had died not long before our visit, he had started mining at 14 years old and had shoveled tons of the stuff in his lifetime. There was nothing exotic about it to him. Nonetheless, he replied to me in a gentle, if weary way, “Aye, lass, you can take it.”
While the rest of that coal pile has long since been burned to heat Ernest’s house, the lump I plucked from it has somehow managed to stay close to me for five decades, from England to the United States, and through moves in and around Massachusetts, California, Florida, and now Kentucky. That small lump of coal remains treasure-like to me and rests in my bedside table drawer.
As I grew up, my dad told many stories of growing up in Yorkshire. His stories mainly focused on being a choir boy and bell ringer, a best friend and mentor named Horace, and memories of a boyhood growing up during the terror of World War II. Throughout my childhood, he encouraged my own clear love of storytelling and writing.
I always hoped my dad would write a book about his childhood and the special people who helped shape his extraordinary life. But it never came to pass. He died too soon of cancer, in 2003.
As a way to cope with my grief — and fueled by my love of history — I decided to write a book about my dad’s childhood in Rawmarsh. It meant returning to where he grew up for the first time since that 1970 trip. I met extended family — some for the first time — and tracked down many of his childhood friends. They were beyond kind and supportive.
Writing my book has been a beautiful journey that has far exceeded my hopes and dreams. I’ve been up church towers and belfries, descended into the stifling confines of a coal mine, and been welcomed into the living rooms and lives of my dad’s extended family and childhood friends.
I could not know when I picked up that lump of coal in 1970 at Ernest’s house that it would come to represent an inspiring journey that has led to my learning so much about my dad’s childhood in Rawmarsh and the challenges my family and so many others faced living in poverty and through war.
Now that rough yet glistening piece of Yorkshire coal represents the most amazing, illuminating journey of my life so far: Achieving my dream of writing my book and living my purpose of being a champion of opportunity for all.
Diane Bailey-Boulet | Author | Speaker
©2020. Diane Bailey-Boulet. All rights reserved.
