Life In A Basement

We moved into the basement in late September or early October. I wasn't sure how I would like spending winter in a basement, but I was up for the adventure. And glad to get out of the apartment we'd had since late May. (Not to mention the rent money we could save for construction.) It was the second floor of a narrow brick building. Just like in Germany, I was living with no door, except the main entrance at the bottom of the stairs. But, this time I didn't share it with the people downstairs. That door was locked on our side and they had another entrance. There were five rooms on three levels. Two bedrooms and a bath at the top of the stairs were on one level. Down one step to the living room and down three more steps to the kitchen. Which had an outside entrance, down steps to a detached garage. I never did get to see the lower apartment to see how that affected their ceiling. We went from that to a basement behind the garage. All one level on the ground, with the hill putting our living area underground. The house was 28' X 40' with the garage widening to 32' X 20'. (According to my memory of almost 40 years ago.) A concrete block wall separated the garage from the basement. And, I had a door. With no lock, but once the garage doors were closed, we were locked in. We had plywood walls to separate two bedrooms and a toilet and shower. With a big laundry tub between our bedroom and kitchen serving as our only sink. The kitchen area was also the future laundry. This was all on one half of the basement. The other half was all open and served as dining and living. Uncle R. B., my Mother-In-Laws brother, built a cabinet that would also stay in the laundry room once our kitchen was upstairs. We bought a built in double oven and counter top range and they were temproarily just setting on the countertop for use while we lived in the basement. I could also use the washing machine and dryer tops as countertop. (My family worked at Whirlpool, and Dad gave me my first washer and dryer.) I've never camped out, but living that way for 14 months seemed to me a lot like camping. Still, after the two years in Germany, this time I felt like I had it all. Especially since I could drive again.

There wasn't much we could do on the house that winter. It was a cold one with a lot of snow. So I was both anxious to get started again and glad for the break. We had several electric heaters that kept us reasonably warm, as long as we wore sweaters. It seemed a damp cold to me. I'm the kind who usually runs around barefoot or just in socks. That winter, I learned to wear shoes at home. I had a big thick breaded rug on the floor in front of the T.V. so J.T. had a place to play on the floor. But, he seemed to prefer pushing his trucks around on the concrete. He stayed healthy, so I didn't fuss with him.

I took a job that winter and found a nursery for J.T. that was run by a retired school teacher. J.T. turned 4 and he was getting a kindergarden education. He loved it, and I thought it would be good for him. I was working in the office of a factory that made gaskets to order. At first just as a general office girl typing and filing for whoever needed it. This gradually changed and I ended up with the blueprints from prospective customers who wanted quotes. I would match their blueprints to our dies and machinery and work up the orders for the factory to make prototypes to send to prospective customers with our quote. Every day brought a new and different challenge. There was some stress, but the final say came from the men over me and if something didn't work, it was their problem. One of those common situations where the woman does the work and some man gets the credit. (Or maybe, just maybe, sometimes the blame.)

We had our first Christmas as a new family in the basement of our own new future home. I wanted a live christmas tree that we could plant and always have. A symble of starting over with all the promise of a good life. It was a blue spruce and it was perfect. In shape, size and color. Things were going well, till spring.

That spring brought us an unusual problem. The first thaw. I came home from work one day to find it raining inside the basement. Mostly on our bed. Which was next to the shower in our half bathroom. We had vented the shower, but our vent froze on the outside. So there was no place for the shower steam to escape. It had accumulated on the underside of the subfloor and froze. We'd never noticed the layer of ice building above our heads in that area. Till it thawed and rained down on our bedroom. This cold, musty, smelly rain that ruined every material it touched. Most of our clothes were on a clothsline stretched across the room. We even had to replace our matress and springs. The wet wood seeped for days. And we each got a mostly new wardrobe. That is one of my most vivid memories of our life in the basement.