Do you remember

This is really going to be a rambling ride.

 My baby sister emailed her comments and she started a storm in my mind, she said you forgot to tell the washing machine was the old wringer type and it was in the basement and there were steeps steps going to the outside thru iron doors (you know like the one in the song Playmates slide down my cellar door) mom would carry clothes, bedding etc. by the basket full and hang them to dry on lines she would place every Monday morning and take down at the end of the day, roll up and store with the clothes pins which were placed in a long style peach basket, I remember if something was badly stained and rubbing on a wash board wouldn't take out all of the stain, she would carefully lay it on the grass to dry (believe it or not that would work, the stain would diminish to near gone) and now that I have you in the basement I'll take this chance to explain everything that basement meant to all of us, follow carefully.

 First I would like to say this was as clean as the rest of the house for every Saturday we would scrub the floor down with a push broom and soapy water, rinse and let dry, you see on bad days the kids would play down there, we would roller skate, play laugh in the dark.

 Now I have to tell you we had extra boards that we stored down there,  were for our dining room table, well being kids we thought they would be fun to play laugh in the dark with, we would place two big round wash tubs with water on the floor just far enough apart so the extra table boards would fit across, you know on the very edge of one board on one wash tub and the other extending across to the other wash tub right on its very edge, then we would blind fold

the kid we were taking thru the laugh in the dark,

 Needless to say with water and wood we managed to ruin the boards, but boy did we have fun and laugh, when the board slipped and the kid got all wet, thru all of this mom held on to her sanity and lived a good long life. 

Well when my oldest sister was a teenager we had converted our furnace from coal burning to gas, so we tore down the wood coal bin, scrubbed till there was no trace of where it had been, then instead of the yearly white wash job on the walls, we painted with a shiny finish light green paint, a room size linoleum was laid on one side with porch furniture set around the Victrola, we thought it was end of all ends in Victrola it was electric, you didn't have to wind it up.

 This came just in time for me to learn the Jitterbug, you see my older sister was in high school and she needed someone to practice with and you guessed it I was available, those early years of practice helped me when I finally went to high school, I was privileged to have a circle form around me and my partner at the schools sock hops we attended on the weekends.

 By the way if you noticed I always refer to it as our basement it was a big no no to say cellar in our house, just as we referred to the top floor as the third floor, not attic.

 We had a basement, ist floor w/living room, dining room and kitchen, 2nd floor  had 3 bedrooms, and the third floor which had linoleum on the floors and wallpaper, this made 3 more bedrooms, one was heated, the older kids slept in the unheated rooms and we covered with blankets and piled warm winter coats on top of us to sleep and stay warm. 

 

I just thought of something else that I think is funny, we had those old style mattresses, when you used them long enough your body made a deep crevice (don't know if this is the correct word) in the shape of your body, you couldn't lie anywhere but there, even if you tried you soon rolled into it.