Our townhouse in Burke had a floorplan with a sub-basement. You descended a flight of steps to the basement, turned a corner, and walked down three more steps to the sub-basement. Since 1995 or so, this room has been a quaint little library with a wooden floor, a bar, and a small furniture set.
The sub-basement of my childhood was quite a different room. A set of metal shelves ran along one wall, holding various tools and boxes of nails. Saw horses stood off to one side, and our bikes were usually parked in the center. The floor was cement, and cobwebs hung from every corner. A giant green plastic pool, “Mr. Turtle,” was propped against the far wall when it wasn’t holding court in the center of the common area behind our row of townhouses in the summertime.
This room, though creepy, dark, and dusty, was the site of the best adventures in the house. It had unmatched hiding spots. We would play hide-and-seek inside when we needed a break from the heat of summer, and if you could slip away to the sub-basement without being noticed, your chance of victory was virtually guaranteed. The piano bench at the top of the basement stairs was home base, so if you could lure unsuspecting kids to the pitch-black basement, you could wait for them to take a wrong turn and then bolt up the stairs, burst through the door into the blinding sun, and tag the piano bench. Safe and sound.
The sub-basement was also the site of water adventures. Whenever we got a hard rain, the sub-basement would flood, sometimes as much as eight inches. It was almost like a snow day. We would run down to the basement to check the water level, and if we were lucky enough to get more than a few inches, we’d run back up to put on our rain boots, and then scurry back downstairs to wade through the water. My parents had quite a different perspective: my dad would grumble and move things to dry ground, and my mom would fuss about how dirty the water must be. It would be years until they hired someone to correct the problem, so we had many good times in the watery sub-basement.
My Corner of the Village 