You could say we're a modern household, at the uppermost levels. The top floor, where my son and I office, is a virtual techno-gymnasium. We have six PCs up there between us, four phone lines, a small mountain of printers, fax machines, CD burners, and stereo equipment, plus an overstuffed crawl space full of various things that come with wires, batteries, and instruction manuals.
So if our house was a person, the top floor would be the brain. The first floor is more like the body's trunk. It has a lot of less high-tech (but still very essential) stuff, like the TV and refrigerator. We also have a blender, a toaster, and a clock radio.
And then there's the basement, which is the body's galoshes, the lowest of the low tech.
Going from the top floor to the basement is like taking a trip backward through time, with the basement being the Dark Ages. During the winter it's pretty dry. But with the spring thaw and subsequent showers, everything takes on a mungy, mildewed smell. For several months every year, the floor sweats from moisture pooled just below. When we get a real gullywasher, water squirts in from chinks in the walls, as on a leaky ship.
I'm not saying we have a wet basement, but it has been an excellent year for periwinkles. Sitting in the middle is the boiler, which heats water and sends it up to the radiators. I'm told you have to bleed the radiators every year. Fortunately, we have lots of leeches to assist us in this task.
Then there is the washing machine. We just replaced our old one, because we couldn't get the legs balanced. One foot had rusted away and was shorter than the others, so during the agitation cycle the machine would gallop around the room, banging into things, knocking out weight-bearing pillars, causing the various basement doodlebugs and centipedes to run for cover. When the cycle stopped, the machine would sit in the middle of the room, panting, its energies spent. It was like something from "The Exorcist."
There's also a toilet down there, which no one in the family uses but me. It's cold and creepy, and you lift the lid with one finger in case a wolverine or something has made its abode inside. Instead of reading a magazine while you sit there, you tend to get involved in what the wildlife around you is up to.
I have been going down there several times a week for five years now, to get away from all that techno-treasure on the top floor. And I could swear that the same long-legged spider has been sitting in the same place, a few inches from the toilet paper dispenser, alive, but not especially demonstrative, for that entire period. Sometimes I wonder what a good day is like for him.
But I fear I have made the basement sound unattractive. It so happens that we just bought a dehumidifier; it stands by the wettest wall, sucking moisture from the air and condensing it in a plastic drawer.
As a result, a lot of that funny smell has lifted. And the water makes the best coffee you ever tasted.
Michael Finley is America's best-loved futurist.
