Mrs. Parr made us write letters to the hammering man that lived in the radiators of those cold Beechfield elementary rooms.
He got a lot of mail that winter - '70 to '71, and we scratched our gratitudes on the four line papers, certain to keep our ascenders and descenders in time and in tune with the peals of iron and steam.
It wasn't until '77 that I got a grip on thermodynamics and realized there was no man in the heat of those cold Beechfield rooms,
No giving hand with a maul to pound away the nails of frost and loose the stiff knuckles of a chattering hand.
But back in '71, when mercury pressed against iron, too young to formulate disbelief, we gave our penciled thanks to the hammering man that once had wrought relief.