(from Karen and Kitty)
When I was a young pre-teen I had visions of creating some sort
of “clubhouse” in the cellar. I’m not quite sure what I had in mind.
Possibly just some privacy, since the only time in my living in that
house that I had a “room of my own,” was one summer when I got the use
of the upstairs back porch. Well, I began to sweep out the area at
the foot of the stairs where there was a small area with a sort of
berm around it. When the first centipede appeared, I was gone!
Privacy, schmivacy, I wasn’t going to hang out with gruesome bugs!
And I remember that Mom hung the laundry down there in the back
section in rainy weather and in the winter. Even after Dad finally
bought her a dryer, she was cautious about using it very much, worried
about the electric bill, as I recall.
And, finally, I remember one summer coming to visit and making
ice cream down in the basement with a hand-cranked tumbler-type
ice-cream-maker. Kirsten must have been about four or five and I gave
her her first home perm that day. It was a bit disastrous and she has
foresworn curls ever since.
— Karen
Karen, you memory of the centipede brought up a memory for me. Mom was away–probably with someone having a baby–and one of the “little ones” was with her.
The other was away at camp. I was supposed to do some laundry. I was at the tubs in the basement at the bottom of the laundry chute. I saw this BIG black bug. I started thinking angry thoughts about which of my sisters had left a “rubber bug” in the laundry to scare me. Actually I was pretty sure it was Karen. (She loved me so much) I picked up the “rubber bug”! It was real!!!!!!!! It moved in my hand. I screamed running up the stairs. Just then the phone rang. Kathy Bardeen was calling me. I was still screaming when I answered the phone. Her mother could hear me screaming. They drove into town to find out what was wrong with me. Thelma took care of the bug.
— Kitty