Retreating to cool

I think I've mentioned before that the house I grew up in was not air conditioned. I think whole-house air conditioning was much less common in the 1970s, and where we lived (northeast Ohio), there were only a few times a year when it got uncomfortably hot and stayed so overnight. (There were a number of uncomfortably hot days every year, but it usually cooled down enough at night that open windows took care of cooling the house).

But during those hot days, we had to do something. (Well - my mom, my brother, and me. My dad was either at field camp up in the mountains, or was in his office, and I think even then campus buildings were air conditioned). Sometimes we'd go to the public library for a while (it was air conditioned). More commonly, we went underground. Our house had a basement, and it was usually 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the house. (It was probably more humid but in those days - before my asthma really blossomed - humidity bothered me less than it does now).

I remember making things in the basement. Often, I carried the craft books I got at the library down there and set up at an old card table. (I remember in particular trying to make toy mice like ones I saw in Handmade Toys and Games (the caption described them as "dancing a stately minuet," how could I resist?). My mom also kept back numbers of some of her craft and "general" magazines (like Women's Day, which used to regularly have craft projects in it), and I would spend time looking at those. (I remember loving the Joan Russel toy patterns in there, but also hating that they were usually published on tiny little grids with the expectation that you enlarged them).

A digression: I wonder if anyone today (with the existence of enlarging copiers in every library, and as part of the printers in many people's homes) knows how to do that any more? I remember doing it - using a ruler to mark off 1" squares on a cut-open brown paper grocery bag, and then carefully trying to copy the pattern at the new larger size. Usually it worked out okay when I did it, but I also admit I was a lot more prone to make toys where the pattern was already full-sized, or else make a smaller version of that (I had a couple books of patterns like that, where I just made mini-versions of the toys, because I couldn't be bothered to scale them up). But the patterns in the magazine were just too small for that most of the time (or, more maddeningly, they used two different grid setups for different parts of the pattern). Most of the time there was some deal where you could mail off for a full sized pattern, but either (a) the magazine was old and the time period for that had expired or (b) it cost money, which I never had as a kid.

(There was a bit making the rounds the other day showing a torn-up $20 and $5 bill, and the claim that the person's child had felt it was too low of an allowance, and so in protest they tore it up. Likely a staged photo to create fake outrage, but: when I was a kid, $25 was like 2 months worth of allowance PLUS being paid to mow the lawn once or twice. I think I'm a bit of a spendthrift adult who buys stupid stuff some times because I didn't get it out of my system as a child)

In those days, pretty much all my sewing was hand-sewing (I didn't have my own sewing machine until I was 13 or so - it was actually an inherited one - and my mom didn't generally let me use hers). So I could take that down to the basement. We also painted down there, and I made dollhouse furniture, and other things. Because it was cooler. The light was crummy, though.

(We didn't have a finished basement - it was really mostly a storage area, a big jumble of things - some stuff we used rarely (the card table), some stuff that wasn't needed much but was "too good" to throw out. Also this was where extra canned goods were kept, and where my dad's workbench was. The washer and dryer were down there too - we even had a laundry chute).

The house my parents moved to (in Illinois) has a basement (still used exclusively for storage) but it has whole-house air conditioning. And my house lacks a basement (and I could really use that storage, and it would be nice to have a safer-seeming retreat at tornado warnings) but at least I have air conditioning.