The Basement and the Window Dicky Torched

Along with the pool/ping pong table (that made it a little less scary down there), the basement had the pantry items (including the periodic bursting can of botulism), washer dryer, Ruthy's ironing paraphernalia and the old spartan shower that Don Jones finally installed when Ron was nearly out the door to college... (how did we manage 6 people and one bathroom for so long without a shower??) There was also an old wash basin, and a sump pump where the hamster drowned. I was pretty young, but I swear there was a hamster named something like "Sniffles" who often got loose and ran around the house. He liked to hide in the kitchen cabinet with the pots and pans, chewing little holes in boxes that contained kitchen gadgets like the hand-mixer. When his wanderlust led him somehow into the basement sump pump, Sniffles wasn't found until it was too late. He was buried with dignity beside the basketball post in the backyard.

The basement was a treasure trove of stuff. Under the stairs, over by Dad's work bench, in the toy and sports box - and there were things in the rafters, too, just above the pool table. Gramp Foote's old Blue Bird guitar was up there for years. A pair of ancient skis, too. At some point, Dick's toboggan served time in the rafters....I think. When I was in high school, I took a night class in learning to play the guitar, and used the old blue bird as my instrument. Save for a few warped edges and strings that looked rusted, it seemed serviceable enough and I wanted to learn how to play. The sight and sound of the guitar rendered the instructor speechless. After gamely trying to 'blend' with the mellow tones of the more contemporary, well-maintained guitars, I finally stopped taking the class out of embarrassment. 

One of the better Dicky stories involved the basement window over the washing machine. My account may be riddled with misremembered details, but this is what I recall. Once Ruthy was working part time, she was often gone when we were all home on school break. (There had to have been times when she realized being off-site during these breaks was a bad idea). Dicky and Ron were tasked with burning the trash as their chore. This meant taking the garbage pail out to the trash bin in the yard and lighting it in a safe and mature manner. How this was never seen as the makings of a disaster is beyond me - don't most boys have a fascination with matches? This particular day Ruthy was at work or out somewhere and it was winter and cold as heck, so Dicky - King of the Masterminded Plot - decided instead of running out there to the far corner of the yard and freeze while trying to light the trash, he'd save time and light it in the pail at the back door and then run the pail out to the trash as the fire started to light, dumping it in the bin just as the flames took hold. No time a-wasted and barely even having to stop. I didn't see this happen personally - although I would've given all my allowance money to have been there - but I gather when the match hit the trash at the back door, the entire pail went up like a gas-soaked bonfire. He got as far as the first step out the door before having to fling the fireball into the nearest window well. The fire finally doused, tragedy averted - except now the window in the well was scorched and cracked, and the siding just over the well bubbled. Thus the byzantine cover-up began.

It was a good thing O'Donnell's Hardware was a short walk down the road because Dicky forged back and forth to reglaze the window, several attempts were thwarted over some missed detail. (According to Ruthy, on a visit to the hardware store a few months later she had an interesting conversation about the day her boy spent time with them reglazing a basement window.) 

To complete his cover-up that would fool both parents, putting a brand-spanking new window over the laundry work area would draw the eye of precisely those two people who didn't miss much. So he switched the new window with the one near the work bench where Dad stored all his paints and tools, and where a shelf partially obscured the window from view near the laundry area. An entire day of work to cover the mess he made finally ended in success - he'd managed to remove two windows, reglaze one and replace it in the area where it would be least noticeable before either parent returned that evening. 

Within two or three days of the torched trash incident, Ruthy had him cold. Seems the window he moved into the laundry area had a spray-painted circle where someone accidentally overshot a can of spray paint above Dad's work area years before. That spot now was on the window above Ruthy's work area. All his efforts that day to hide the results of his pail-turned-molotov-cocktail fell apart on that one little detail he neglected to consider: that the moving paint splotch would be at least as noticeable as the brand new window. What I remember most about those days is that Dicky was a guy who sought solutions, plotting them out in the most interesting and intricate detail....and usually to cover his tracks. There was never a dull moment with Dicky in the house!