A Corker of a Day
There is a hot breeze blowing today. Our dewpoint is sitting at 74 with humidity in the mid 60s.
Before the day got too long, there was one project on my hit list. Our walk-up attic is typical of a 100 year old home’s attic. It smells like an attic in the hot summer months. Dennis had been out to the Fleet and Home store and came home with a jar named Fresh Wave odor removing gel. It is actual crystals that will in time disappear. It was time to take the empty container down and leave a full one behind.
When I opened the closure at the top of the steps, I was taken aback that the small window was open. The window had been kept closed with an aluminum full turn button. That window is as old as the house and the soft trim indicated that the turn button needed to be turned into the wood not so badly worn. It’s a good thing that we had put a screen on that window decades ago. I could only imagine the bats that would have found this opening at tree top level.
In the middle of the room was a collection of items I had pulled together another time when I had visited. Older paper bound books that were meant for the recycling bin, and a three ring binder that I recognized I had put together decades ago.
As I walked down the attic steps backward, moving my stash with me one step at a time, the kitchen floor felt secure when my feet felt it underneath.
The older books clunked as they hit the recycling bin. The three ring binder, we opened on the dining room table. It was a journal of 1993 when our town had received seven inches of rain in a short spell. The infrastructure of the city couldn’t handle all that rain and our basement filled with water from the sanitary storm lines coming up from the floor drains and up out of the toilet. It was four feet high of pure fecal mess.
The city cut the power to our home and we stayed in the Super 8 until such time that the mess was down to a thick sludge on the basement floor. With dumpsters in the drive, it was a mess with a smell that took on a life of its own and needed to be cleaned up quickly. What carpeting we had in the basement needed to be cut up into small pieces to be able to put it in five gallon pails and carry it out. I had documented everything with photos and a running written journal for insurance claims. Seeing what we went through that year, I can only imagine what Kentucky is facing . . . to a much larger event.
Yup, I am saving that three ring binder as a reminder of what a sweet forever home we now have. The city has since improved infrastructure. We have since tiled the interior and my studio was created. I so appreciate my studio.