The Beginning
Jim Harmon worked in the furnace room in the basement, was a hard working, God fearing man, who attended church regularly at the United Brethren Church on East Main Street. He lived on Hudson Avenue, and walked the few blocks to work each day. Many days, his wife Jessie would walk with him to work, and she would walk him to the Home-style Diner on 4th Street, and they would part on that corner ... he would head on to the Arcade, and Jessie would return home. She would always turn and see him enter the 4th Street Entrance. Jim would enter the Arcade, and go down in to the basement where the huge power plant and furnace were located. He kept every piece of machinery and equipment in "his" "engine room" as he called it, cleaned and polished. He worked and fussed over all of the equipment, the stokers, the coal bins, the burners, the diffusers, as if they were his own.
Jim had grown up around Mary Ann Furnace, and had attended a small one room school house on Montgomery Road. His family later moved to Brownsville, and he attended and graduated from school there. Shortly after graduation his father was offered a job at the Weyant Greenhouse, "out East" as it was referred to in those days, to work in the Power Plant there. They moved out on East Main, and his father would take the inter-urban each day to Marne.
THE REST OF THE STORY
