“Come on Clarence, lets get the tubs. Go get them. The water is high enough!” I called to him as I ran into the house from the basement steps.
Papa had built our new house a few years before the depression hit the country. I don’t remember living in the old house at all. I must have been about two years old when he built the new house. Papa was an expert carpenter, the best. The house was very nice and as a child I was proud to be living in such a fine house.
Papa also made a huge basement under the house, with steps from the outside leading down. The roof extended over the steps. I can remember hearing the blasting of the dynamite as the works cleared out the dirt to form the basement. After the basement was dug out, Papa hired rock masons to line the walls with beautiful flat rocks. Then he cemented the floor. It made a pretty basement.
It was always nice and cool in the basement. As children we played there lots of times. Mama kept the kraut that she made down there, some fruit, vegetables, and other things. It was good to have a place for play and storage. We were all very proud of it.
Except there was one problem, a big, big problem. When the rains began to come in the spring or fall, the water would seep through the walls and floor of the basement and gather on the floor. The longer the rains lasted the deeper the water on the floor became. Papa did all he could do to keep the water out. He dug ditches and put in drainpipes. He put in new cement between the big rocks on the walls and put more concrete on the floor. But nothing seemed ot work permanently. Occasionally the water would rise and cover the floor. Sometimes it would get fourteen or fifteen inches deep. This was a great distress for Papa and Mama, but it was a delight for Clarence and me.
Clarence came running out to join me. “Great! O boy! Yeah! Let’s get the tube. Let’s go sailing on the high seas.” We ran and grabbed Mama’s washtubs and down the basement steps we went.
“You children, don’t bang up my tubs nor knock a hole in them,” Mama called out the window.
When we got to the bottom of the steps in the basement, we set the tubs on the water. Then very carefully we climbed into the tubs. Sometimes we would tump over as we tried to climb in. Sometimes we would tump each other over. When we were finally in the tubs we would sail across the basement. With our hands we would paddle the tubs along.
Sometimes we pretended we were a king and queen sailing across the ocean. Other times we would pretend we were pirates trying to rob other ships. We had such great fun. Finally, when we were too tired to play anymore, we would take the tubs back up the stops and hang them where Mama kept them. We would be wet from head to toe and have to change clothes, but very happy from sailing in our ships.
After a couple of years Papa conquered the problem of rising water by digging a large sump hole in the floor of the basement and running pipes outside below the level of the floor. This took care of the rising water almost all of the time. When the water did get over onto the floor it was not enough for Clarence and me to float on anymore. Of course Mama and Papa were happy with the result, but it put an end to our “sailing across the ocean.”