Doing my recalling bit again, I do remember when attics were attics. Growing up in Pennsylvania, just about everybody had an attic. You went up the stairs to the second floor and then looked around for steps leading to the attic. It was good fun going up into a grandparent’s attic. You never knew what you might find. There could be an ancestor’s copy of the Declaration of Independence, or perhaps an early copy of a flag from Betsy Ross (although that rarely happened).
You might find an early copy of The Yellow Kid though. It was one of the first comic strips, but most likely would not go over today. Even I as a lover of comics would have to admit that the punch lines were pretty poor – but it was a start. One time I was at a neighbor’s house and a friend and I found a wedding dress. We brought it down for comments. Turned out to be that the dress had belonged to the first wife, and the second wife did not know it was up there. We left as we were too young to listen to the resulting comments.
What brought this up was the fact that like a number of folks in our development, we just had stairs in the garage installed, so we could get up to the “attic”. Now, when we bought the house we said, “We will not need to install stairs. We have plenty of room”. Then as life moved on (four whole months), The Blonde in the house felt a longing for different chairs for our kitchen table. The new chairs were ordered, arrived and placed around the table to much rejoicing.
Naturally, something needed to be done with the old chairs. Putting them in the garage would have loused up the ambiance, so it was obvious that there was only one solution – right -put in stairs to the garage “attic”. It is a long story, but the chairs had to be kept for sentimental reasons and could not be given or cast out into the unknown world. Besides, it was soon discovered that there were many other items that would love it, if they were placed in a secure attic. The stairs were just before I started this, but before you know it, the attic will start to resemble a real attic from the old days.
While there may be some resemblance to an old time attic, the problem will be that the grandkids or great grandkids will not be able to sneak up the stairs to the second floor (there are none) and thus the stairs (again there are none) to an inside attic. In point of fact, as members of the deprived (of all good things) generation, they will not be able to sneak up to the attic at all. First of all, they will be told that they had better not pull the stairs in the garage down.
In addition, the car will be moved up far enough so that they can’t pull the stairs down anyhow. In short, they will go through their little lives never knowing what the grandparents have up in the “attic”. That is really a shame as in our case they will never find the original secret code of the Justice Society of America with the pictures of Hourman and Dr. Fate that are with it. On the other hand that may be just as well since the two characters I mentioned are not around much anymore, and there are no movies made of them. The grandkids would thus not be impressed.
I can assure you that if they found a wedding dress, it would belong to The Blonde in the house!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com.