Oh, I loved the basement. Going down the stairs, seeing the shelves of preserved fruit and jelly in those big Mason jars. Such a lot of work, making those preserves, dipping the jars in boiling water, melting the wax to seal them, all that steam in the kitchen on a hot summer's day... but what joy in the winter to be the one who got to open that jam jar, prying the wax open with the tip of a knife, getting to lick it clean and then chew the sticky sweet wax in lieu of bubble gum.



Then at the bottom of the stairs, the coal furnace glowing. What a scary, pre-industrial era image, the iron door, the piles of coal, the dust everywhere, the crunchy floor underfoot.



There was a nook with remnant of a broken down wall in the back room where slaves had hidden in the underground railroad. There were bare lightbulbs hanging from wires. The foundation walls were old stones, all exposed, with bugs and dust. The storm door that came up by the driveway looked just like the one Dorothy goes down in the Wizard of Oz.



Today, I doubt most modern, protective parents would let a child go into such a danger trap as that basement. But it was where my imagination took flight, in the dirty dark recesses where time stood still.

I have to catch up to you guys a little on the blogging. Merry, I either didn't know, or had forgotten that you worked downtown. It's strange to think of LeRoy in those days. Leah, I remember the quarter eating milk vending machine too. It must have been a real pioneer thing, as you said, for the vending machine and weren't they in paper cartons, too? I remember the hardware store most clearly because I went there so often for cartridge fuses for 25 cents each that we kept blowing in the 39 East Main house. Remember the electrical system was so overloaded that we were always smelling a blown fuse, and going down in the dark to replace it. Along the way Dad paid Mr. Sharp (Dad of Phyllis and ? on Summit St, old neighbors) to put in a new service box, but it was never hooked up while I lived there. Also links to memories of the coal shoveling. The basement was full of memories for me. I must have been down there more than I thought. The darkroom, of course, (can't you smell the dektol?) the back room where miraculously two soapbox derby racers were built, or appeared by spontaneous generation out of the ethers, The garbage barrel, clever in it's convenience from the kitchen, but always propped up from beneath in some rube goldberg fashion, waiting to be dumped.

I remember sitting at the bottom of the basement stairs, and looking up at the beams in the ceiling, recalling a fable-like story that we had in "Lands and Peoples". I have remembered it in my own fashion all of my life. It told of several brothers in a family (in a land far away) who one at a time went down in the cellar and saw a hatchet stuck in a beam above their heads. The second son found first son crying about it, worried that it some day would accidentally fall and kill someone. They cried together. yadda yadda yadda The last brother came down and saw the others fretting over this and reached up, laughed, and took down the axe and solved the problem. I wonder if I ever found the real story again, if it would resemble my version at all.

Meredith, what's new when it comes to your plans for Texas? Inquiring minds want to know!

John stopped by yesterday on his vacation drive up to Mt. Shasta. We went to the Cotati Accordian Festival - it was fabulous! so many whacky people with beautiful instruments making great music outside in a park on a beautiful day. There will be photos to share of me trying to play "Lady of Spain" with the largest group of accordianists in the world.