Recollections from the basement

Skinny skeleton keys taken away by the sellers, needed for sentimental reasons?
Comics stored away, forgotten, then re found. 
Doorknobs and old hardware tossed by my mother to make room,
scavenged by a passerby in the alley. Metal and fabric blinds tossed.
She thought them useless and old.
Steep stairs going down, the last one a doozy.

One time in the dark, I fell into a half a pig that still needed to be cut up.
The pull light was on the far side of that pig. My mother bought and transported half a cow, later cut into unrecognizable sections not matching those on any chart, often boiled.  My favorite part was the soft gelatinous oxtail cooked in a barley soup.  An uncle broke the marble counter cutting up the cow. A tall freezer packed full with white papered bundles.  The abundance made me feel safe as far as knowing where our next meaty dinner was coming from.

My little brothers set a phone book on fire, thankfully on the concrete floors, the blaze not reaching the wooden walls.  My screams and a bucket of water doused their enthusiasm.

The laundry room painted in a deep, chalky turquoise.  Matchbox hanging on the wall, with a decal of a little housewife merrily sweeping. A white Styrofoam floaty with a red horse's head, worn on a day I saw a giant silver fish jump high over the water on Lake Michigan. A sled for going down the hill at Humboldt Park. Charming old decals on the windows, a Dutch girl, a wooden potty chair, dresser, jars on the shelves. 

Wringer washer for a time in our kitchen, floral cozy sewn to measure, then in the basement.  Filled with hot soapy water, whites washed first, wrung out through the rollers, placed in first of 2 rinse waters in 2 compartment cement sink, rinsed and wrung out by hand  twice, hung up to dry on clotheslines outside if the weather was fair, or on the clotheslines in the "big" room in the basement near the water heaters.  Sometimes, outside, then inside, then outside again as the weather changed.  Drove me batty. Subsequent loads of colors, socks, then the dirtiest work clothes, water darkened and blackened with each load.  Washer chugged.  My brothers threw out the old washer in the 1980s and bought my mother a new one.  She regretted losing the wringer washer and the ability to reuse the same water for multiple loads.

A couple years ago, a man whose family owned the building before my parents, returned to visit.  He asked for a purple brick with lettering from the patio for remembrance.  His older, very frail friend took pictures with his Leica.  I was worried for him on the uneven steps in leading to the alley. 

Another, earlier time, my mother spoke to a stranger by the viaduct north of her house.  Turn out that his family lived there.  He sent her a picture of the house as it was during the Depression years.  A long-haired boy in a white shirt riding a tricycle was our visitor.  Showed the same stained glass window on the second floor.  Storefront with big windows, display of apple bins.  Proprietress in an apron, sitting in front.  a child skipping rope.  Very few, very bulky cars parked in front.  Most jobs were walking distance in factories.
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Childhood Regrets--Treasures Lost and Found

Most of my regrets stem from things that I remember that slipped away.

Starting in the attic:  My mother and father bought their house in the mid-1960s.  There was an old storefront with a 4-room apartment in the back, on the second floor there were two 4-room apartments, on the top and attic with a slanty roof and a mansard front.  The compartments under the eaves held treasures from the family who lived there previously.  One such object of wonder, multiples actually, were pink crepe party hats, tassel on the top, with gold paper trim around the rim, and a rubber band to fit under your chin.  Inside was a cardboard pull that popped a cap and revealed a riddle when you tugged the end.  Only a couple survive now.  Most were thrown away when my mother had a leaky roof replaced.

Also intriguing were packets of photography chemicals in packets.  Thankfully my brothers and I never ate them although it was certainly a consideration.  Postcards that would now been 100 years old with elegant, spidery handwriting, etched by fountain pens, teal stamps in the corner.  In a house my brother Iggy and I bought together, a man who lived there wrote multiple postcards home recording how many miles from home he was.  All gone.

Back at my parents, green plastic mermaid swizzle sticks or toothpicks? for olives?, "naughty" playing cards--red lipsticked girl in skimpy aqua nightie, a plaster statue of a ballerina.  Tenants left behind other things-- 2 lamps with plaster floral bases, each flower with a small light bulb, little shop of horrors-esque. My mother's books, my father's war medals in an altar like construction of his that I disassembled and couldn't put back together, a soft teal, leaf-patterned, wool tug underfoot.  Letters from relatives in Poland that took 2 weeks to arrive sections censored out, from an aunt in England asking many questions about grocery prices, daily activities as my dad's last brother and his family contemplated emigrating to the United States. Formal photographs of my father etched with the retouching notes from the photographer. what else?  Bow ties, one worn in the formal photo, blue tie with silver tread, the sheerest cotton voile shirt,  many of my father's clothes were given away--a navy overcoat remade to fit my tall, thin brother who had his same first name.

Skipping over the middle and down the steep stairs into the basement:  A compound regret of mine, smashing an old, tin train with a brick until it was totally crushed looking, then curiosity satisfied, and guilt activated, sneaking out into the alley and throwing it into a metal garbage drum.  Regret averted:  Busting my brothers while they were playing with matches and setting phone books on fire.  I doused the flames and diverted them from further arsonist activity. 

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