Warren’s father-in-law, Muns, on tractor, with farmhouse (and attic) in rear, ca. 1950. |
At the top, the house attic is a collector’s paradise. One finds the expected National Geographic and Life magazines, books, clothes, furniture, lamps and sundry castoffs from Vicki, her sister, Cam, and parents. In addition, as ancestors, relatives and friends passed away, what wasn’t bequeathed, given, used or tossed might also have found its way up the wide, curving stairwell.
Pathways through the collection are much improved since Cam and Vicki began their sporadic discovery and reduction quests. Exemplifying treasures they’ve unearthed are two large, beautifully painted and ornately framed oil portraits of…well, no one knows.
Growing Up
The attic of the Upstate New York house that sheltered me from age 2 until college had wooden flooring down its center and a large cedar wardrobe off on one side. The rest was mostly uncovered loose insulation between the joists.
That attic was accessed by stairs that began in a closet-size storage area behind a door from the kitchen. The telephone was near the attic door, and I would sit on the attic stairs with the door squeezing the telephone cord, holding as private a conversation as one could have on a party line. (Raise your hand if you don’t know what party line is.) Private lines became available before I reached high school.
My most vivid memory of that attic was not of the stairs or attic per se, but of my uncle’s leg sticking through the living room ceiling when he stepped in the wrong spot.
First Houses
The first house I owned–the modular house that hated me (see 9 Nov post, House Sound Check)--had no attic that I was aware of. If it did, storing anything that high above the house’s center of gravity would surely have toppled the house.
My second house--the one with the rainfed private lake in the basement--had a large empty attic, accessed by a pull-down wooden ladder through a bedroom ceiling hatch. We added a sheet of plywood as flooring on one or the other side of the hatch to store anything that couldn’t float and we might never need.
The first house in the Washington, DC, area was outsized with abundant storage space throughout. The attic was a very welcoming, comfortable space, with full flooring; however, since visits to the attic required lugging a ladder from the garage to reach the ceiling hatch, I wasn’t up there very often.
Wrap Up
Looking up at the attic ceiling hatch. |
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