The stairs are older than my dead-and-gone great grandparents. They creak as I put weight on them while I descend into the damp, musty basement. Most people don’t think twice about the basement that exists beneath their everyday living space. The house I live in is over one hundred years old. The original structure started out as nothing more than a couple of rooms, the main room being the kitchen.
Over the years the structure was added onto. The basement I’m descending into supports only the kitchen and a part of what is now the living room where the big stone fireplace is located. It’s a long, but narrow, stone-walled foundation with a packed dirt floor and only a single ceiling beam-mounted lighting device to illuminate the area closest to the staircase.
No one comes down here anymo
