This is a new series of A to Z prompts, created by Dr. Lee Zacharias.
She is a professor emeritus of English, at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She has written five nonfiction and two fiction books. She has contributed one chapter for “NOW WRITE! NONFICTION” and it is titled “Riffing”. That means to brainstorm and explore ideas. In that chapter, Dr. Zacharias wrote up a list of word prompts for writing enthusiasts to riff on and spark pieces of writing. That list of words has almost every letter of word from B to W. It is missing words starting with A, N, V, X, Y, and Z.
Right now, I’m ignoring the missing words, and calling this list the A to Z list of prompts. I might include my own few words, to fill up the gaps A, N, V, X, Y, and Z in the alphabet.
There are many B-words and I’ve chose “basement” as my prompt.
What’s a basement to me? What is a metaphorical basement to me? So far, I can’t think of a literal allegory. My only one is that this basement of memories has stayed with me all these years, into older adulthood.
I’m starting with describing the basement as the lowermost level of a building. It is not the prime level of the building. Typically, the highest floor is the prime level. My parents had their bedroom on that level as it was attached to a large balcony. You could look at the tops of all your neighbors’ houses, their balconies and over their garden walls, into their gardens.
The basement is usually used to keep storage, functional equipment like the furnace, washer, dryer and do the laundry.
I remember living only once in a house with a basement. My parents and grandparents stored a personal library of books, a multi-tiered stack of indoor aquarium, sewing machine, two wardrobes, and washing machine. From the basement’s gate, we access the courtyard, where the laundry poles and washing lines are. There was also an external garden. My grandfather paid for hanging “rafters” for his pots of orchids.
The basement was accessed by a flight of stairs descending from the first level. Just before the last step into the basement, there’s a collapsible iron gate; which actually means it can be pushed and pulled to close or open it. This gate was installed to keep out young children, or unauthorised people from entering the basement. The gate could also keep the basement as a separate living facility from the rest of the house, as it had its own gate to enter and exit directly out into the courtyard. From there, there was a long flight of stairs up to the ground level, where a gate led to the road outside. I imagine the basement could be used as living quarters as it was large, nay, huge. It only lacked a bathroom. The occupant has to walk up the flight of internal stairs and use the nearest toilet, which was beside the kitchen on the ground floor. I suppose the owner can hire a contractor to install a plumbing system for a bathroom. After all, the basement had its own water supply for the washing machines and garden hose.
This basement level had only three walls. The fourth wall was replaced by a barricade of grilles, with a matching grill gate to open out to the courtyard. This ensured plenty of light and ventilation into the basement. It got dark only when it rained heavily. The basement had sufficient natural light, except under the staircase. That was the darkest and creepiest corner of the basement.
Nobody went down to the basement, except when they had to perform household chores like washing the laundry, iron the clothes, feed the fishes in the aquarium, use the sewing machine, or take clothes out of the wardrobes. There were around seven in my family back then and we all had shared bedrooms.
I was a child below 12 years old when I was living in that house, but I could do some chores like sweeping floors, mopping floors, washing laundry, ironing clothes and use the wardrobes. Most of the time, I was alone while performing these chores. Sometimes I felt scared to be alone in the basement, but I had no choice. I just powered on.
The most memorable incident that occurred in the basement, was when the hired help, a cleaner, met with a large spider. She used a mop head to hit at the spider. It was carrying its sac of baby spiders and when it was hit, all the tiny spiders burst out. The cleaner moved with near lightning speed to use the mop head to smash all the tiny spiders.
The main problem with a split level house was its sewage system. There was one sewage manhole on the ground level and one on the basement level. The former had pipes below ground, to direct the flow from the ground to the basement. Although the basement had no toilet, it had a water supply for the washing machine and hose. One day, the pipes at the ground level broke and leaked down the slope to the basement level. It smelled. The contractor was called and he fixed it. He warned that the weight of the ground level was sinking on the sewage pipes and they could break again in future. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My grandparents decided to move and discussed it with my parents.
We moved from that house and never again lived in one with a basement.
What’s in your basement?
Reference:
NOW WRITE! NONFICTION, Editor Sherry Ellis, Chapter “Riffing” by Lee Zacharias, p. 47 – 48.