Joyce and I both have fond memories in basements.
Joyce's father finished off the basement in their home when she was a child and he did a great job of it. He had a room there with his workbench and Joyce would sit down there to watch her father, a tool and die maker, making things for the home.
Joyce would stay with her grandparents and she would go down to their basement with him when he stoked the coals and put on a show for her by throwing old screen wire and other metals into the furnace to make different colors show through the open door.
Later her father helped Joyce create her own room in the basement so she could have more privacy as she aged. All these things made for good memories for her.
Now for me, I remember our old coal furnace had a separate bin for coal. The big coal trucks would back up our driveway and dump coal through a chute into the bin and I, as a child got to climb in there and scrape the coal down so it would completely fill the bin. Later I got to carryout all the spent coal from the furnace before going to school in the mornings. I loved being able to get in there. My dad had a big work bench down in the basement. It had 2 big drawers under the top. One day I looked in one of them. It had a balsa wood airplane fuselage and some blueprints. I asked my mother what that was. She said my father had bought that as a package when he returned from WW-2 to build for it for me. That plane was never finished, but I remember the thought if not the fact it was never finished.
Our basement had an old Maytag washing machine that I have no idea how old it was. Sometime along the way there appeared an electric wringer attachment. I was fascinated at that. My mother would send me down to the basement to use the wringer to squeeze out the water from a load of laundry before hanging it up in the basement. One day I was so curious I had to stick my finger in it to see how much pressure it put to wring out the clothes. A couple of smashed fingers that turned black with the bruising, I still had to hang up the laundry.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
Joyce's father finished off the basement in their home when she was a child and he did a great job of it. He had a room there with his workbench and Joyce would sit down there to watch her father, a tool and die maker, making things for the home.
Joyce would stay with her grandparents and she would go down to their basement with him when he stoked the coals and put on a show for her by throwing old screen wire and other metals into the furnace to make different colors show through the open door.
Later her father helped Joyce create her own room in the basement so she could have more privacy as she aged. All these things made for good memories for her.
Now for me, I remember our old coal furnace had a separate bin for coal. The big coal trucks would back up our driveway and dump coal through a chute into the bin and I, as a child got to climb in there and scrape the coal down so it would completely fill the bin. Later I got to carryout all the spent coal from the furnace before going to school in the mornings. I loved being able to get in there. My dad had a big work bench down in the basement. It had 2 big drawers under the top. One day I looked in one of them. It had a balsa wood airplane fuselage and some blueprints. I asked my mother what that was. She said my father had bought that as a package when he returned from WW-2 to build for it for me. That plane was never finished, but I remember the thought if not the fact it was never finished.
Our basement had an old Maytag washing machine that I have no idea how old it was. Sometime along the way there appeared an electric wringer attachment. I was fascinated at that. My mother would send me down to the basement to use the wringer to squeeze out the water from a load of laundry before hanging it up in the basement. One day I was so curious I had to stick my finger in it to see how much pressure it put to wring out the clothes. A couple of smashed fingers that turned black with the bruising, I still had to hang up the laundry.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
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