On Tue, 5 Apr 2016 22:19:07 -0400, Cheryl >
wrote:

>On 4/4/2016 10:46 AM, Janet B wrote:
>
>> the basement under the house where I grew up was a scary place that
>> children didn't want to go. It was lit by a light bulb in each room.
>> You had to be brave to travel to the center of the room and pull the
>> string to light the bulb. Various rooms wandered off in different
>> directions. All rooms were rough made and obviously meant for storage
>> and such. There were the rooms that were coal bins in the winter
>> (coal came in through the window.) There was the furnace room, eerily
>> lit by flickering flames only in winter, otherwise totally dark. It
>> was a very cold place because the outdoor access was cement stairs
>> covered by a drop down wooden lid. This kind of basement was very
>> common in older houses in the upper mid-west.
>
>Sounds almost exactly like the basement in my paternal grandparents
>house. It wasn't designed for a living space - it had creaky wooden
>stairs and was meant only for storage. I can't remember the lighting
>though. It was probably like you describe, though theirs was probably
>all one big room under the house, or maybe a smaller room off to the
>side. It was in MA. There was even a cement set of stairs with a wooden
>lid at an angle as a separate entrance from the outside, as you
>described. You'd have to prop the wooden lid open with the wooden stick
>thing if you were going down there from outside. I also don't think
>that was fully underground.

I think you're right about not being fully underground. There were
windows at sidewalk level. Mother did her weekly wash down there and
hung the wash as well. Everything was cement or stone.
When my parents went to meetings at night I was always really scared
because the door to the basement was just a simple thing.
When these houses were built, no one worried about intruders breaking
in so you didn't need sturdy doors to the outside.
Janet US