Not everyone is lucky enough to experience the wonder of time travel. But I get to – every time I visit my parents. First of all, they still live in my childhood home and second of all – my old bedroom walls are the way I left them more than 20 years ago: covered in Teen Beat posters of Corey Haim, River Phoenix and Chris Young (Who? Exactly).
Then there’s the basement.
Not only a place of mystery and intrigue – but a virtual cavalcade of nostalgia – that I shall get to in a moment. This particular basement rivals the catacombs of Egypt. Seriously, you could easily film the entire Saw movie franchise down there and not need much in the way of set design.
Dubbed the “Jon Benet Ramsay Basement” by a good friend of mine, the reasons for that will soon become apparent. Incidentally, this same friend calls my parent’s backyard the “Martha Moxley Backyard” – but that’s a blog post for another time.
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The basement is huge – the entirety of my parents’ house to be exact. And it’s never been properly finished. It’s eerily lit by a few bare bulbs scattered throughout. The stairs are raw wood – the kind you can get a splinter from if you venture down barefoot. And there’s no banister – but not to worry, you can clutch at the mildewed concrete wall to your right as you teeter downward into the depths below.
There’s a smell down there – not necessarily bad – just strange. And always the sound of dripping water. There are many a shadowed cove and darkened recess – filled with damp clothing most likely never to be worn again, old suitcases, discarded toys, piled up boxes.
There’s an apple cellar. Yes – a freaking apple cellar – but with no apples mind you. There are barrels and vats and a basket of potatoes and onions – again I stress: no apples. There may also be a propped up plastic baby pool in there – just in case we ever feel like filling up a cracked and dirty baby pool with water.
This basement is the kind of place where you’ll walk around enthralled by what you see – and before you know it 2 hours have passed. Sort of like the New York Museum of Natural History – only dustier . . . and way more interesting.
This is the basement where we hung out as kids. It’s where my brother’s band practiced in the far corner on a weekly basis – and where said band performed during many a soiree. There is still DIY egg carton sound proofing scattered about as reminder – not to mention a tacked up nudie calendar.
When company arrived on Saturday nights, all us kids dispersed into the cold and dark basement to congregate around the ping pong table and dart board and pool table. They’re probably still down there beneath the detritus – I haven’t actually checked.
The basement still possesses the allure it always has. There’s a thrilling sense of foreboding emanating from below – especially when my mother tells my kids they are not to go down there unaccompanied. Unless they’re looking to contract a good, old-fashioned case of tetanus. Or because they require 34 rolls of Bounty brand paper towels.
It was this past summer that I happened to be digging around down there – looking for clothing á la The Breakfast Club – when I began unearthing strange and wonderful items. An absolute treasure trove of things from a childhood gone by.
Continue reading in order to follow me down my personal rabbit hole of nostalgia.
Fantastic! Thanks for the creepy trip down memory lane. Do your folks charge admission?
I think my son would have a blast playing in your parents’ basement. 😂
The hussy horsey made me laugh out loud. The rest of it made me recoil in fear. Why, pray, are they holding on to these dolls?!