The Bell Found In A Lump Of Coal
I will let the "Genesis Park" introduce this subject: In 1944, as a ten-year-old boy, Anderson’s task was to keep the coal furnace stoked at his home in Buckhannon, West Virginia (WV). One evening he went into the basement to refuel the furnace and carried a particularly large lump of coal on his shovel. As he carried the loaded shovel, it wobbled and the coal fell onto the floor, breaking the lump in two. A slender metallic object was revealed, protruding from one of the broken halves. Newton set aside the piece with the curious object and placed the remainder into the furnace. Over the next couple of days the boy extracted a small bell from the coal, first by whacking it with a croquet mallet and then by cleaning it with lye and a scrub brush. Unfortunately he scoured all the coal off the intriguing artifact! But his parents and others witnessed the bell that he brought up from the basement and it became an object of conversation, residing on an old secretary desk shelf. ...