The City Club Rooms in Plymouth is where I spent my life growing up. It was a large building with all kinds of interesting rooms and hallways. None of the rooms was more interesting than the huge basement.
Steven Spielberg is good at playing with your imagination. E.T. The Goonies. One that you Grasshoppers remember is "Duel" where Dennis Weaver plays mind games with a pyscho tanker truck driver. My point is that Spielberg knows how to get into your head. Once inside, your imagination doesn't need further help. The boogie man can take over.
Grandma Myrna told me stories about rats. Sewer rats. Rats as big as "tom cats". The City Club had a major connection to the sewer located in the front of the basement with a large perforated plate covering the sewer hole. Somehow, someway those erie little bastards found there way into the City Club on a regular basis. Big deal you say? Well, Myrna told me they were having smell problems in her "back" apartment. Also funny noises. She and Chalk searched the basement with flashlights. They found a space under their apartment that could be entered from the basement. They thought they saw something moving in the crawl space. They were right! Her count was 32 rats the size of tom cats. Whoa! I know they used rat poison and traps. They had to be careful because food was served in the City Club and there are limits to what you can do. From the movies I've seen, packs of rats attack little kids (like me) and devour them. At least they would in a Spielberg movie.
I don't know why Myrna told me that story because from that day on, everytime I went into the basement I deserved hazardous duty pay. I went into the basement a lot. I would stoke the furnace. I would take garbage to a large open area of the basement to store until garbage day. I would bring cases of soda and beer up from the basement for stocking the refrigerated storage cabinets behind the bar. You get the idea. It was not an area you could avoid. The basement was a series of passages to different areas, not one huge open basement.
I thought that I was the only one that had been told the "rat story" but I found out sister Addie also had heard it.
So you can imagine this little kid (me) being told to take the garbage from our apartment down to the basement. It was dimly lit. There were shadows. There was that damn story.
So I would summon up my courage, grab the garbage bag and move with quick steps. I walked down the center of the aisles. I checked the pipes and rafters located over my head so that a rat would not drop down on my shoulder. If noise was created like a storage freezer kicking in, my pace quickened. Heaven help me if I saw a shadow.
The worst, and I mean the worst from a wild imagination standpoint was when somebody turned off the lights at the top of the stair entry. The rule was "keep the lights off when not used". So people would yell down to the basement "is anybody down there?" and if they heard nothing, they flipped off the switch. If you were deep in the bowels of the basement, people couldn't hear you respond. When the lights went out it was pitch dark.
I remember being in the garbage storage area (where rats could find food) many times when some idiot would flip off the light. Sometimes I thought it was brother Jack playing games. The only way to get out of the basement once the lights went out was to feel your way along the different passages. Your first thought is what a--h--- turned off the lights. Your second thought was panic. Your third thought was to stay cool and work you way back to the entry stairs. Everytime you touched something for a bearing, a rat might be waiting to greet you. Every time you tripped over a piped plumbed across the floor and almost fell, there could be a rat waiting for you. As you successfully felt your way back to the stairs, there was always a chance a rat could fall on your shoulder. What would you do? What would you do? And then finally, you would find the stairs, make your way to the top and turn the light back on. You survived the crypt. Then you mother would ask if you "took the garbage into the basement". My response would always be "yep".
The reality is that in 15 years of living at the City Club I never saw a rat. Not even a shadow.
I don't know why Myrna told me the story. I think she just wanted to make me aware there was a problem and if I saw a rat I'd be prepared. What she did is trigger my imagination. It made every trip to the basement an adventure. Reflecting on her story today reminds me of scout leaders telling a ghost story around a late night campfire. Nobody sleeps that night!
So Grasshoppers, tell your stories carefully. You never know which one will take your offspring on a journey of fear. There are enough fears in our everyday lives.
Love,
Dad