Feelin’ Naughty? Pick Up Some Coal

For George Bronson, it wasn’t a matter of naughty or nice.

Rather, the 65-year-old Roanoker was on the hunt for the perfect yuletide gag to stuff in his son-in-law’s stocking.

So on Wednesday, Bronson skipped the shopping malls, heading instead to a coal yard by the railroad tracks on Shenandoah Avenue, where he trolled a sooty pile for just the right lump.

"He’ll get a big kick out of it and laugh and say ‘What I do wrong?’ " Bronson said after selecting lumps from a bin.

Once the mainstay for producing heat and electricity, these finger-blackening lumps are now fueling a new demand as comical holiday gifts — and not just in their natural form.

Their reputation as naughtiness indicators is being transformed by retailers looking to put a humorous twist on a well-worn tale.

Nowadays, coal seekers no longer have to mine the railroad yards for the whimsical gift. A variety of fake and candied coal options are showing up in local stores and online as retailers look to cash in on this aspect of the holiday tradition.

"Everybody just loves to pull pranks," said Cathy Bell, a manger at Kroger, where individually-wrapped pieces of milk chocolate coal sell for 79 cents a lump. Fresh Market in Roanoke is also selling fruit-flavored bumble gum coal for $1.49 a bag.

Even high-end retailers are latching onto the fossil-fuel-as-candy trend. L.L. Bean sells its variety of sugary coal, a cinnamon-flavored rock candy, for $14.95 for two bags. At Crate & Barrel, one can even find Kosher-certified coal candy in licorice flavor for $7.95 in a felt pouch.

For shoppers in search of a more authentic-looking rock, but who don’t want to bother with the dusty mess, CVS is selling imitation coal for $1.99 a sack. Each sack includes three lumps of Chinese-made look-alikes.

Of course, the real thing is still in vogue, and online entrepreneurs are more than willing to fill the demand. Bagofcoal.com, for example, sells personalized pouches of Pennsylvania-mined coal for $5.95. On eBay, the starting bid for "bona-fide Utah high grade bituminous" is $9.95.

Meanwhile, Bronson found his gag gift this year locally at F.L. Hatcher & Son, a coal and oil company founded in Roanoke in 1908.

Although the company usually sells 50-pound bags of coal for $5.50 apiece, it allows visitors seeking stocking stuffers to pick out a couple of rocks for free during the holidays.

"People ought to want the real thing," said Nancy Hatcher, an office manager at the company, noting that the dusty rocks are washable.

She acknowledges that the demand for coal dropped significantly over the decades as more customers made the switch to heating oil.

Now, fuel oil makes up about 90 percent of their business, said owner Frank Hatcher, who entered the business in the 1940s. But the company keeps a couple of piles of coal beside its two-story tanks of diesel for customers looking to burn it their furnaces or add to their model train sets.

So far, about a dozen visitors have dropped by in search of coal for Christmas gifts.

They include people like Douglas Ross, 48, of Roanoke County who was looking for an alternative to the typical wrapped-box present for a friend in need of a housewarming gift.

"We decided to make the theme of our Christmas gift to him firewood and coal," Ross said, noting that the new house has a fireplace.

Ross is also a bit of a coal purist.

He bristled at the mention of fake coal, describing it as "bogus" and "cheesy," and fondly recalled the days when he and his roommates were in dental school in Richmond and plucked coal from the railroad tracks to heat their apartment.

"Coal is coal. Chocolate is chocolate," Ross said, adding that the two should not be mixed.

For Eddie Cox of Salem, the notion of purchasing coal as a gift serves not only the purpose of a gag, but also as gentle hint to a friend whose desk is spilling over with files.

The 62-year-old also stopped by F.L. Hatcher & Son this week for some coal.

"I got some coal, some sticks, some paper and lighter fluid," Cox said, chuckling. "I’m going to wrap it up and give it to him," he said, with some instructions on how to clean up the desk.

Of course, with fuel oil prices climbing this year, some also noted the irony of giving real coal as a gift. Perhaps the crumbly black rock, forged through centuries of compression, may not be as worthless as it seems.

"Coal is a pretty good commodity these days," Bronson joked.

At the least, it’s worth a couple of laughs.