YES! IT IS STILL SCARY!

      I grew up in a rather large  farm home south of Laurel, Iowa. To give you an idea of its size we had five bedrooms on the second floor and had an attic on top of an attic. Don't ask me the logic of that one!

      The basement had five large rooms including the landing area once you were down. The foundation was poured 17 inch concrete. I digress. This little story is about that basement and looking back still to this day was at certain times one scary place.

      The south half of the basement was OK as the southwest room which was used for laundry, a shower, and water pump and water heater. The other middle south room was used for what ever including used for a Halloween party by my sister Doris and where I set up my Lionel  train for a time. The southeast corner room was used for storing canned goods and other garden items for the winter.

       It was the north half of that basement that gave me the chills of freight on too many occasions! Let's start with that most evenings in the winter it was my job to go down to  feed the furnace with coal from the coal bin and discard the "clinker's" or ashes from the furnace and spread them onto our driveway.

     On those winter evenings I would descend those stairs, sometimes reluctantly, to do my chores. I would start at the landing that had a door coming in from the west side of the house and a door with  a few steps that came down from the main floor bathroom. The landing was used primarily for the hanging of my dad's overalls.

      Here we go! First of all, about halfway down those narrow stairs was an open stair back plate. You always knew that this hand or claw or whatever was going to reach out and trip or grab your ankle! You always knew that there was someone or something lurching in that dark area underneath those stairs. God only knows what that thing would have done after it tripped you up. And, why didn't we ever seal up that back splash plate in the first place?

      If you made it safely down, the door to the furnace room was usually propped  open and you, again, knew that someone was behind it ready to say HOWDY!

Now the real test of nerves was to begin entering the furnace room! TO BE CONTINUED!-----------