I don’t like basements. Back in 1999 and 2000, Miss OT spent many a Sunday afternoon visiting open houses with me in the Boston area, and she can tell you stories about how I rejected potential homes purely on the sense of skeeviness I got at the top of the cellar stairs. The intrepid Miss OT never failed to check out the basement anyway, and despite her assurances that the house had a “good” basement, I still wouldn’t go down there.

 

A “good” basement was one that was dry, non-smelly, well-lit, had a relatively high ceiling, and was preferably empty, though neatly stored items were OK too.  Basically, a good basement looked like an extra bedroom, only lower in the house. The house I eventually purchased in Watertown had a basement that was as close to this ideal as I could find, and after I moved in, I spent a great deal of time and money having junk removed and generally cleaning it up. (Note that a year later, my upstairs neighbor allowed a friend to move in with her and fill up the basement common area with a big pile of unboxed crap, including notebooks and textbooks from college, a Thighmaster, and assorted boots, snowshoes, books, skis, broken old lamps, toys from her childhood, and other junk I wouldn’t look at twice at a yard sale. As you can tell, I still bear the scars.)

 

Fast forward to 2005, and as I’m house hunting in New Jersey, I’m again focused on basement cleanliness as a piece of the home purchase criteria. The area where I’m living was settled in the mid-1600’s, so while there are a lot of new condos and single family out in the suburbs, the in-town area where I chose to live is comprised of old Victorians. This did not bode well for the “downstairs bedroom” basement concept, and sure enough, the house I eventually purchased barely passed basement muster by a hair. So it’s not terrible down there, but --

 

As it happened one midnight, as I stood in my bedroom ironing something and watching TV, all la-di-da-da happy, the circuit breaker let go and I found myself in total darkness, clutching a really hot object which I gingerly set down.

 

I knew what to do – I knew where the circuit breakers were – but I also knew that running down to the far corner of the basement, flipping a switch, running all the way back upstairs to see if it worked, running back down to the basement to try another switch, rinse, repeat – was not the most efficient way to solve this problem. Plus, you know, the whole going into the basement at night thing.

 

So I looked out my window and lo! Dutch’s lights were on, meaning someone was home. (Sometimes Dutch’s lights are on and nobody’s home – but that’s a topic for another day.) I got him on the phone, and no sooner had I explained the problem than he appeared at my front door. I handed him a flashlight at the top of the basement stairs and wished him Godspeed as he headed down into battle.

 

From my post near the basement door, I called down to explain where to find the circuit breakers. Dutch began methodically flipping each switch, and we started the “is THAT it?” – “no” – “is THAT it?” – “no” – conversation. Three flips into this, I glanced down the stairwell and noticed a shadow on the wall, a shadow thrown by what appeared to be the largest spider I have ever seen in real life.

 

I bravely continued to respond to Dutch until he hit upon the correct switch, and as he neared the stairs to come back up, I called down “hey! There’s some sort of spider on the wall!” He started to laugh – he seems to find my arachnophobia amusing, for some unforgivable reason – and then he saw it.

 

“Jesus Christ!” rang up the stairs and he jumped backwards into the basement. The “spider” moved a little higher up the stairwell, toward me –

 

– and Dutch got back up and looked closer (clearly a male – not a single one of my girlfriends would’ve done that – they would have built new lives for themselves in the  basement before they’d get close enough to that thing to walk past it – )

 

 – and then he laughed. “It’s just a camel cricket. I have them in my basement, too.”

 

What the @#%&??? Why didn’t anyone tell me about these things before I bought a house with a basement?? Apparently, they’re quite common in the area. I spoke to my cousin, who lives about seven miles from me, and she shuddered and said the worst was when they got into the laundry machine, and then got dried with the laundry, and then either fell out onto her all warm and crisp as she emptied the dryer, or else got folded into the clothes for a nice morning surprise someday. Excellent.

 

By the time Dutch reached out to catch the multi-legged monster to “show me,” it slid itself into a crack between the stairs and the wall and was hidden. So he cheerfully came back up the steps and handed me the flashlight, noting that I seemed a little tense. I refrained from cracking him on the head with the flashlight, given the rescue mission he was performing for me, and instead simply nodded. On the way out, he added, “oh, and cute pajamas!” but by then the flashlight had been put away and so his head remained intact.

 

And the worst part is that now I know I am inflicted with the infamous camel cricket  – spider impersonator, dweller of dark places and haunter of laundry. So I am doubly opposed to going into my basement, and I am wondering how I am going to get my Christmas decorations out of the storage area down there. I am told the crickets retreat after the first frost, and so I suppose I can hope for an early, cold winter – that seems cruel to others, though. I also keep hoping I don’t throw a circuit breaker, because Dutch won’t always be home when I need him and sooner or later I’m going to have to do it myself.

 

Perhaps the thing to do is refinish the basement – for about a thousand dollars, I could get a crew of Mexicans with a dumpster to clear the place out, and start over with new rugs, paneling, ceilings – make the place seem more like a real room. Or maybe I can just relocate all my belongings to the attic, which has a more challenging entry, but which also has the benefit of being dry and insect-free (as far as I know). Of course, I could just move – but then I’d be looking at a lot of skeevy basements all over again, and you know what? That’s just not for me.

 

Return to The Archives