A comment on "Cubbie Storage": From1930 into the 1940's this was the dread "Coal Room". Through an opening in the upper right corner of the room the coal was delivered regularly to the room from the outside via a chute.Over half of the room would be filled with coal. My father would shovel the coal into the furnace. The room was scary but the furnace was not. The unheated room was somewhat frightening because it was mostly dark (one dim light) and was coal black and dusty and always dank. My father deserves a medal for keeping us warm. I still marvel at how the heat was transferred from the furnace to the radiators that warmed the house. We did have storm windows at times for really cold winters.
Above and to the left of the coal chute opening on the side of the house was a small rectangular window for the delivery of ice for the ice box. I loved seeing the ice man coming from his truck with a big block of ice on his shoulder. He had a heavy leather drape on his shoulder for the ice. He lifted it with heavy tongs and the ice was always covered with saw dust. He would open the latched door on the house and then open the ice compartment on the back of the ice box. Placing the ice gently (on my mothers command) he would sometimes go get another block. At some point in the 1940's we got a refrigerator and the romance of the ice man was gone but not forgotten.
We did not have a mail box or a mail slot up front. The mail was delivered to a slot opening through the back door.
My mother did the family laundry every Monday. The clothes from the upstairs came down to the basement from a clothes chute which was across from my sisters bedroom. The laundry room was elevated above the basement floor. We had a small electric washing machine and a hand crank wringer. The wringer got most of the water out of the washed clothes. In good weather she hung the clothes on a line in the back yard and in the winter they were hung in the basement. She used a cotton clothes line with wooden clothes pins. We got a clothes dryer sometime after 1938. How was my mother able to do this mostly by herself for all those years?
The basement had a central area and to the left was a little used work bench with a vise and some tools. Beyond that on the left in the center was the squat furnace which was painted white and behind that the coal room. Across from the clothes chute a small toilet was added. The most basement fun that I had was when we got a ping pong table. We literally played for hours and got pretty good. I later played on the winning Intramural Table Tennis team in college. We were undefeated for two years.
During the war years the whole neighborhood would gather in the basement to "put up" various forms of tomato products that had come from our Victory Garden, a vacant lot by the Turk's house on Dover St across from the Hoags our northern neighbors. The tomatoes were put in jars in various forms: tomato segments, catsup, and chili sauce. They were ground up using a mortar and pestle like device called a Foley Food Mill. The results were equally shared but the patriotic neighborhood fun was the main take away.
No comments:
Post a Comment