Today, I live in a ranch home with a lower level we call the basement. It consists of a laundry room, a TV room, and a tool room. During the 40s and 50s, while living at the Monterey farm, the lower level was always called the cellar.
My sisters, Anita (89) and Jannetta (86), insist their memory is better than mine. I was told, “When we were young, the kitchen that we now call the ‘old kitchen’ was in the back part of the house. Pop had a modern kitchen built in the front of the house, where a fireplace used to be.”
Under this “old kitchen” was a ground cellar which didn’t have a door to the front cellar.
I recall a visit to this ground cellar with Mom as a youngster. I held onto her apron while she led the way, flashlight in hand, down the rickety steps. I have no idea what she was looking for as nothing was stored in that cellar. I know I never ventured into that dark, musty place again. I also know this place to be where the “boogie man,” who liked to venture in other parts of the house, lived.
One place the “boogie man” liked to visit was the cellar, located under the front part of the house. To get to this cellar you had to go through the pantry from the kitchen. At the back of the pantry was a space about 3×3 with two doors. One led to the back porch; the other led to the cellar.
This cellar floor was cemented and had electrical wiring, so it wasn’t quite as scary as the ground cellar. I still had a problem with it. I did not like when Mom had me “fetch” an item from the cellar all by myself. Even as a teen, if Mom and Pop were gone a length of time, the first thing I did was make sure the porch door and the cellar door were locked. No way was that “boogie man” going to venture into the rest of the house!
This cellar was also divided into two rooms. The larger area was to the left down the stairs; the smaller area to the right. This back room held vinegar barrels. I knew Gladys had a story about these barrels in my family newsletter. This is her story: “The barrels hadn’t turned to cider yet. David and I decided to taste some. We unplugged a barrel and it ran out all over the basement. I yelled for Mom, but Pop heard and came too. Mom hid me and David ended up getting the licking!”
I called my sister, Anita, to see what she knew of the vinegar barrels. She told me, “Mom send me down to fill her vinegar jug. I had to suck on a small hose till vinegar came up then quickly put the hose in the jug. And then I spit!”
I liked her story but I asked if she knew any more about actually making vinegar. She said, “I know you have to have a mother.”
I laughed, “Now Anita, I simply can’t believe Mom had to be there to make vinegar.”
Now she laughed, “No, it’s a term, ‘the mother of vinegar,’ but I’ve forgotten how it works.” I checked Wikipedia: “Mother of vinegar is a substance composed of a form of bacteria that develops on fermenting alcoholic liquids, which turns alcohol into acetic acid with the help of oxygen from air.” Since I don’t plan on making vinegar, I’ll let my readers figure out how to make vinegar with “the mother.”
Also in this room were the shelves against one wall. It was a colorful array of whatever the garden yielded each summer. The canning was always done in the kitchen and hauled to the shelf for winter use. Anita told me, “Mom even canned sausage and tenderloin.” The only canning jars I remember were red beets, jellies, peaches, and the chow chow. I still love the colorful array of vegetables in chow chow. I can still recall Mom yelling, “Carole, fetch me a jar of peaches.”
Under the one window in this room was the coal bin. I loved when Pop ordered coal for the winter. First, I’d watch the truck back up to the cellar window, which was now open. A coal chute sat between the opening at the back of the truck into the open window. The driver then hoisted the truck box up in the air. Most coal went into the chute and down, but some had to be shoveled. Before all the coal rumbled down the chute, I quickly ran to the back door of the cellar and into the coal bin area to just watch. It couldn’t happen often enough to suit me.
And, of course, the coal was carried in coal buckets to the other side of the cellar, where the coal heating furnace stood, that heated the house radiators. During the winter months, I never saw anyone, other than Pop, bank the stove with a shovel of coal and close the draft. Every morning, again he was there to shake the grate, open the draft, and add new coal. I doubt any of his children thanked him for waking up each morning to a toasty warm house.
We did have one chore that concerned the furnace—clean up the ashes! With a long metal poker, we pushed the ashes through the grate into the pan. With a shovel it went into the coal pail or it could be piled onto the wheel barrow. If the dirt road had icy patches in winter, some ashes went there. Most of it went outside the yard near the outside toilet.
When winter was almost over, Pop had some wood in a wood basket to use just to keep the house a trite warm. When my parents built a home in Kutztown after retirement, Pop shellacked the wood basket. I now use it in my living room for magazines.
I have a story about another coal furnace from years later in my first marriage. We moved into a home in Fleetwood that had a coal furnace. That first winter, we couldn’t afford a new modern furnace. So it was my job to “make fire.” My father came to the rescue and taught me all “I never wanted to know” about the “how to” for a coal furnace. I did a pretty good job all winter and then one morning I just didn’t get to the cellar in time. The fire was out!
Now I had plenty of newspaper and cardboard to place some coals on to restart, but I no longer had small pieces of wood Pop had left for me. I was quite upset until I saw a pile of wooden clothes pins on the shelf. Why not? I thought. I piled the whole lot of them on top of newspaper. They were perfect to start a fire. When I related this story to my siblings, they laughed uproariously. I think they told everyone in Berks County. I myself felt it was a most ingenious idea.
Back to the farmhouse cellar. There was a wringer washer that was pushed under the stairs when not in use. We hung the clothes on a wash line in winter. One summer, when Gladys and I were teens, Mom got the “brilliant” idea to do laundry outside. Although hardly any cars went by, if they did, we hid so no one would see us.
Something I love to watch, after Pop butchered, was making sausage in the cellar. Mom brought large chunks of meat and fat in a large bowl. These chunks were hand-cranked into the meat grinder. A wooden stomp was used to push the chunks down the hole. Next the ground meat mixture was fed into the hopper of the hand-cranked sausage stuffer. Pop used hog casings (intestines), after they were cleaned, to stuff the sausage mixture in. Casings were attached to a tube at the bottom of the stuffer. As the casings filled, you could make long or short links by twisting at different places.
And what would a cellar be without an ice cream freezer? We had an old crank freezer. Mom mixed up the ingredients in the kitchen, brought it down to the cellar and dumped it in the inner container. Rock salt and ice were layered between the inner and outer container. Then, we kids, took turns cranking and cranking and cranking. Near the end it was checked to make sure it hardened. The dasher was pulled out and Mom laid it on a plate and all of us kids, with our fingers, scraped off the ice cream and enjoyed our first taste. Mom carried the tin up to the kitchen and dished out a large mound on each of our saucers. I enjoyed breaking up pretzels to put on top of mine. I can still taste that creamy, homemade ice cream!
We also had a spring in the front of the house. It was surrounded with about 6″ high cement blocks with water inside. When I asked the older sisters what they remembered about the spring, both said, “We didn’t have a spring in the cellar!”
I was determined to get to the truth of this matter. I contacted Marion and John Ford, the present owners of the farmhouse. I was told there indeed was a spring in the cellar, but it had dried up by the time they moved in. I told Marion, Pop had this spring water coming into a small kitchen sink upstairs. She said the old pump he used was still there.
No matter what rooms you lived in a house, there are always memories, even in a lowly cellar!
Carole Christman Koch grew up in Berks County and has been published in numerous publications. She has a passion for writing and has many stories from growing up on a farm to raising children to humorous stories about her and her husband to everyday stories to season stories and more.