Thoughts on basements, cellars and other subterranean storage spaces

I don’t have a basement, and I wish I did.

Today, Janine posted pictures of her fiancé working on a project in their basement. Since she lives in a part of the country where basements are the norm, she happens to have a basement. I live in the Phoenix area, and in this part of the country, houses are almost always built without a basement.

Why? I think I heard somewhere it had something to do with the soil conditions. I know first-hand that the soil out here is ridiculously dry and hard; I’ve witnessed Greg using a pick-axe to cut down far enough in the yard to place sprinkler lines or make little trenches for landscaping pavers. When you have to dig with a pick-axe, I think it’s safe to say your dirt is unfriendly, unyielding and generally better off left alone.

In New Jersey, everyone had a basement. And in my part of the state, approximately 95% of all those basements had some sort of water problem. I heard the words “sump pump” uttered frequently in our house, and there were talks about mold, drains and sometimes even mushrooms. By the way, I think I said “supp pupp” in my head until I was in middle school or so. But that’s just because I am an idiot.

Anyway, if you were lucky enough to have a basement that didn’t leak water or become full-out flooded during a rainstorm, you could potentially have the crown jewel of basements…the FINISHED basement. Oh my god. I loved going to friends’ houses that had finished basement. One girl had a whole game room down there with a pool table and a pinball machine, a wet bar (of course we only sipped the liquor as to not arouse suspicion with her parents), a full-sized couch and TV, carpeting and cool track lighting. Most of my friends had basements that were just concrete and fluorescent lighting, but they were still cool, too.

Tracy’s basement was one of my favorite places to be when I was a kid. If she’s reading this, she is probably thinking, “What the hell? You only liked me for my crappy basement?” Yes, Tracy. That’s true. I did only like you for your basement. You knew it. And we know you only liked me for my awesome lip-syncing skills and great dialogue when playing Cabbage Patch Kids Who Get Married.

Seriously though, her basement was fantastic for roller skating. We would crank up the Olivia Newton-John and coast around down there for hours. It was also a great place to build forts out of boxes and yard tools and make a haunted house tunnel behind the hot water heater. In one kind of strange game, we played “Russia,” where one of us would be a soldier of some sort set out to capture the other, who was a “Defector”—usually a ballerina on the run. I’m almost positive that when her family finally moved out of that house, it still had chalk scrawled on the walls down there in that basement that said “Welcome to Russia” and “No Freedom.”

Yes…I am guilty of playing a game where a catchphrase was “No Freedom.” What a dork.

As for my own basements, well, they weren’t so much “basements” as they were “cellars.” And they were SCARY.

In the first house I lived in, the cellar could only be accessed from the outside of the house. The washer and dryer were down there, and so was my Mom’s ceramic kiln and some of my Dad’s auto repair machinery. When my Mom wanted to do laundry, she had to go out the back door and walk around to the side of the house, and go down these crumbly old concrete stairs and into the dark cellar. I didn’t like going down there at all because there were too many shadowy places and after a rainstorm, the ground was always a little damp and there was a distinct Cellar Smell in the air.
Plus, the stairwell leading down to the cellar had walls on both sides, and most of the time there were daddy long-leg spiders and/or snails on the walls. So you had to walk between spiders and snails. Nope! I didn’t want to do that. It was safer to stay up in the living room, watching the Electric Company and eating celery sticks and Stella d’Oro cookies.

When I was 10, we moved to a bigger house in Belford, and that house had a basement that was even worse. This one had brick walls and a dirt floor. Dirt floor. Oh, man. I had visions of bodies buried in that dirt more times than I can count. I was really good at freaking myself out. In addition, the ceiling was pretty low down there, and there was a really old and decrepit looking wood-burning furnace down there. We didn’t use it, of course, but the previous occupants never removed it so it was just lurking in a dusty corner, looking sinister and to me, like a good place to burn the chopped-up bodies of the ones who weren’t buried under the floor.
Wood plank steps led up from the cellar and into the closet that was in our living room. It was definitely scary to me and Trish to think that just behind that benign closet door was another door that led down to the awful, death-filled cellar. Of COURSE, the cellar was loaded with ghosts. Probably hundreds of them. They’d sneak up to the main house at night by slipping under the doors as smoke and then take form and walk up and down the hallway, scaring the crap out of two girls with overactive imaginations.

Later on, my bedroom was the basement level of a condo in Middletown, and it was awesome. It was a big room, it was private, and I had an entrance to the back yard right there in my room. It was so helpful for letting the dog out. I still kind of miss that room, even though it had ugly paneling.

And now, after over 8 years in Arizona, I have never lived in a place with a basement. In fact, I’ve never lived anywhere with an attic, either. There are crawlspaces, but they’re not really built for people to go up there and store stuff. Plus, it gets ridiculously hot up in those spaces, so good luck putting anything that could melt or warp up there.

Now I’m thinking about all the crap I have, and how even though I have steadily reduced the amount of crap over the years so I really only have the stuff I REALLY like, I never seem to be able to reduce the clutter or number of boxes stored in closets and under the bed. I think if we lived in a place with a basement and/or attic, the house would not be so junk-filled. We built a shed this summer, and even with all the holiday decoration stuff out there, we still have more stuff that could use a place where it could be stored. I lust after those homes that are just clean, neat and minimal. I want to do that in our home. And that’s why I wish so hard for a basement.

I want to stash my crap.

And…

I want to be a little spooked by a place in my house.

There’s just this very primitive part of me that wants to be scared, and wants to imagine crazy things going on under the floorboards. I’ve always been that kid who wanted to read the ghost stories and write messed-up stories filled with blood, gore, psychological terror and demons. I’m still that kid, really; I’m just a little bigger now.

And when I become a mom someday, I want to make sure my kid has a scary place in the house, too. I won’t intentionally scare my kid, per se; I will, however, make no attempts to hide the shadowy spots or light them up and make them ‘safe.’ Kids need to be freaked out a little, I think.

And on that note, I bid you adieu. And remember, there is no basement in the Alamo.