East Carbon - where in the world???

 Growing up in Wellington you would have thought I spent a lot of time in East Carbon just a short 30 minute drive away, but I actually had only been there twice that I can remember.  After my mom moved back to Wellington she taught in East Carbon and always extended the invitation for me to come see the Coke ovens.  She told me East Carbon was a quaint place with lots of wildlife (Big Horn Sheep and mountain lions) like the one that canceled recess for the kids. So when New Year's rolled around (yes I am doing this in March) we decided to go see what East Carbon was all about!

Let me just first mention that coming from Price Utah and talking about "Coke ovens" you might be let into wrong thinking and get the wrong idea.  I promise you not everyone that grew up in Price was cooking drugs in their back yard even though Rand thinks so.   Price is a town built my immigrants and coal mining.  Some of the hardest working people around settled the town that I am proud to say I am from.   Even though an uncle two cousins, a mom and an aunt tried to explain Coke to me, I still didn't get it until I read this little article.

Coke Tending the area's beehive coke ovens was dirty, back-breaking work! With very few exceptions, the vast majority of coking operations  relied on the blood and sweat of humans, rather than on machinery, to produce thousands of tons of coke per year. Although the coke workers were regarded as mere "laborers" at most operations, in truth many of the job positions required exacting skills and knowledge gained only through years of experience. A few of the many workers employed at the Quinnimont coking operating, circa 1906 Coke is carbonized coal, a product produced by baking coal in a heated oven. By using a process that allows the impurities in the coal to be burned off, while not allowing the carbon content of the coal to burn, the coal is turned into coke. During the 1880's, coke began to replace charcoal in the making of steel at foundries in the United States. By the end of World War I, eight-eight percent of the nation's iron and steel was produced by using a process utilizing coke. At a typical foundry of the era, coke and iron ore would be mixed together, and then burned in a furnace. As the coke burned, it would remove the oxygen from the iron ore, converting it to metal. Practically all of the region's early coke plants used "beehive" coke ovens, so named because the interior of the oven was dome-shaped, similar to the shape of a beehive.

So there you have it a Coke oven - they were actually really cool.!

And there were lots of them (you will notice all of them are in half)  They would have been a complete dome.

Who better to share "coke" with than my favorite cousins and all of our crazy kids! 

(That's my druggie side talking)! Wink Wink

Even as a one eyed pirate this little girl melts my heart!

Miss Bailee took Layla under her wing for the whole day and I couldn't thank her enough.

Do you think Layla will have future problems because I always forced her to wear Braden's old "boy" coats?

This is such a great picture of me, I can't imagine what I could be pretending to do!  

I love that I am always classy and lady like and......redneck!

My Aunt Sue and my mom together are crazy, crazy, crazy but where there is crazy there is always fun, fun, fun!

Including an outside picnic in the snow.

We finished ringing in the New Year at Casey and Jana's house and I do believe that the game of French Twister is not a game I will allow myself to play anytime in the near future.  

Although the clock showed 11:35 pm Braden the "raging tiger" was pounced and ready to go.  Bailee on the other hand looks like she has had enough.

Notice the clock on the wall.  12:01 and we are like rip roaring party animals.  

I think Layla summed it up nice with her yawn.