Basement Memories

Today I write about a place I associate with my dad.

It’s a tangential move from my previous intention of writing from the angles of people in his life, such as when I started with his parents, but it’s what strikes my mood this week, and it’s my blog, so I can take a tangent if I want, right?  J

Is it weird to start in the basement?  All four of the different homes we lived in during my childhood had basements, but the gold-colored house in Algonquin, Illinois is the one where the most memories— both good and bad—were made. I was going into 5^th grade the summer we moved in, and it was my home base until I moved out to California after college.

The basement was unfinished, meaning there was no drywall on the walls—only exposed wood frames with no insulation, making the space cold no matter what time of year it was.  I might be remembering this wrong…. Surely when I think about the four square sections the area was divided into, I can picture actual “walls”.  No doubt my dad installed drywall over time, over each section as he felt it was no longer avoidable to let it remain unfinished. But it’s not worth spending time on.  Needless to say, it was a cold, underground space with no windows and a hard, cold floor and only minimal lighting in each quadrant.  The stairs from the first floor came down straight into the middle of the basement.  I will pause a moment here before launching into my “tour” of the basement to give you a peek at what was stored under the stairs, since this was the only “closeted” area of the basement, the area for clutter hidden from view and inaccessible unless you actually knew to look there.  Here were our beach toys, some of our camping equipment, and I think the cat’s litter box. It had to be somewhere, right? Meaning that there was a humongous, 20-pound bag of cat litter down there, too. We were a cat family.

So, back to the “tour”.  Turning right at the bottom of the stairs, we had an old couch, maybe a chair, and eventually a tiny black & white TV that my dad hooked up to some bootlegged cable right in time for us to see the premier of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.  I clearly remember that.  It was like the really old days when families would gather around the radio.  For us, it was gathering around the tiny screen watching a gritty, lined image of Michael and his zombie friends dancing in a way we hadn’t seen before, and for such a long time!  His was the first music video that incorporated the “movie” component, and it made an indelible impact on those of us who claim to be teens of the ‘80’s. My dad knew this, and I believe he eventually acquiesced to the second TV for a few reasons.  First, the single living room TV was losing its shareable capacity.  The older we kids got, the less common our viewing choices were, and our nuclear family time was waning. Second, my parents’ relationship was strained, and Dad was spending more time in the basement where his workshop was.  He probably wanted the TV for some extra noise to keep him company.  Finally, being an engineer, the challenge of hooking up contraband cable probably intrigued him. There was also a small, upright piano down here, opposite the couch with its back to the stairs.  My sister played it, storing her music inside the seat of the bench.  Since I played viola during high school, I could also read music and liked to play what few tunes I knew or could attempt from the pieces she was learning.  My dad loved this.  He would hum along, sometimes pausing to hit a note that I’d missed. My dad loved classical music, and having a piano in the house, as rarely or poorly as it was played, was a thing of delight for him.

Across from the sitting/TV area was a ping-pong table and a pot-bellied stove.  Strange pairing of items, I know. When the weather was particularly chilly and the stove was on, the ping-ponger on that side of the table had to be careful not to back into it.  In retrospect, this antique-looking heater should have been by the television, but my dad didn’t always do things we expected, and possibly this is where the smoke from the stove could be funneled out of the house.  No clue, honestly.  Either way, I can recall the scalding burn on the palm of my hand when I reached back to save a shot with the paddle in my right hand, opting to scald my left hand instead of miss the shot.  My dad liked ping-pong, and we had a lot of fun playing it, but I will say that probably my friend Ange and I spent more time down there than any other set of opponents.  She also had a ping-pong table at her house, and our summer days, when the stove was only a tripping hazard and not a burning one, we would alternate between my basement and her sunroom to play the game at each other’s houses. Ange really liked my dad, so much that she visited him (or was it “wished” she’d visited him?) when he was ill and I was yet back here in California.  He always liked her, too.  She never offended; always complimented; and was agreeable. She brought out some of his best, most pleasant moods.

Rotating around the quadrants of the basement from the ping-pong table was the laundry area.  Certainly, my mom spent more time here, as her sewing machine was there, too.  It deserves mention that this sewing machine was gorgeous.  An antique that ran on the gears powered by a thigh pedal protruding down underneath the wooden frame of the machine’s housing. It was its own little table with the machine built onto it.  A smooth, rounded-square cut in the surface allowed the machine to be stored inside it. I loved it. I think my mom hated it for the work it required of her.  In this space, we all learned how to do laundry, but for me, one item in this back corner triggers a tender memory of my dad. A large, antique mirror hung on a chain over the industrial-sized sink that the washing machine drained into. It was on occasion, in front of this mirror, that my dad and his brother cut each other’s hair. Maybe it’s the unconditional sibling bond it revealed, but for whatever reason, I loved it when this beautiful, incredibly heavy mirror came out to reflect their brotherly love.  My own sister and I have this kind of bond. We may scrabble and bicker more often than not, but when the time calls for it, we flow without question or hesitation into the right, loving response.  It was much later, after I was married and living in a home of my own that my cousin, my uncle’s daughter, gifted me a similar but rectangular mirror.  We both fell into tears when I pulled off the thick paper, wordlessly sharing the same sentimental memory of our dads.

The final quadrant, the one that brings us back adjacent to the stairs, was my dad’s workshop. In my memory, he is always wearing an incredibly old, incredibly worn-out sweatshirt of Charlie Brown. It was a very faded orange, and think it read “Good Grief!” under the iconic zigzag line, under the deadpan Charlie Brown, who stood with his hands at his sides, looking straight out at us.  My dad was a manufacturing engineer, and he had tool and die-making equipment down in this corner that was no doubt worth a small fortune. I have no idea what he made for the extra income, but I know there was also a rotary table saw, and gosh, I just can’t recall what else, despite how much I wish I could.  Probably because we were cautioned not to wander into this area, given the cost and danger of the equipment. Still, it’s a firm and lasting memory I have of my dad standing in that corner of the basement, sanding some round, heavy piece of metal, whistling or humming along to my childish piano-playing.