The Attic

In old movies you sometimes have a scene with children rummaging in an attic, through dusty long-neglected antiques of their grandmother’s.  Where I raised my children, however, there are no such attics.  How do you capture the magic of an attic?

When I was a child, my family lived in a 4-apartment house with a double attic and double basement.  The house seemed to go on and on in every direction.  There were hallways, and cupboards and stairways and secret hideaways.  But the best place was the attic.  If you climbed the covered staircase from the main floor to the bedroom floor, and turned 180 degrees down a long hallway to the bathroom and the next apartment, you would pass a mysterious doorway, secured with a hook and eye latch. When I got old enough to reach the latch, I became Nancy Drew on a mission. 

Upon opening the door, however, I was hit in the face by an oppressive blast of hot air that can only be described as “the attic smell.”  It was a combination of compacted stuffy heat, dust, old wooden floors, and that “old people” smell that is really not old people but all the stuff they’ve kept since the Victorian age.

Chatty Cathy

On every stair from bottom to top were items that didn’t make it to the top.  Who knows why … it was too hot… it was too dark … it was too tiring … it was too far.  But for a child, this display just added to the excitement.

“Oh, there is my Betsy Wetsy doll I’ve been looking for!  And two more steps, “And my Snow White costume from last Halloween!”  And three more, “Why is my bubble gum dispenser up here, with the gumballs still in it?  Mom!!  Ooo, it’s still got pennies in the bottom!”

Barbie Dream House

Things only got better the higher you climbed.  As the heat pressed down on your head and your breathing became more shallow and labored, the vision of a veritable toy store of opportunities opened at the top of the stairs.  Our Mom never threw ANYTHING out.  The front half of this huge attic space, therefore, was filled with every Christmas and birthday toy that my sister and I had ever outgrown.  A lidded toy box, decorated in clown-colored circles, doubled as a bench, but opened to reveal forgotten treasures for all ages.  Jack in the Box, Spinning Tops, Lincoln Logs, Slinky, Jump rope, sidewalk chalk, ABC blocks, 4-square ball, jacks, cats-eye marbles.

And that was just some of the small stuff.

There was a 3-foot tall doll with stiff but moving limbs and realistic hair.  There was Chatty-Cathy who talked when you pulled a string in her back.  Barbie and her friends Ken and Midge were living there, and their Barbie Dream House of cardboard, which I had carefully preserved after assembly.  Barbie’s vintage clothes were kept in a vinyl wardrobe-like case, complete with closet rod, hangers and drawers.

Sometimes I still go to this attic in my mind.  I have even gone there in my dreams.  My mom’s deficit – hoarding – had created a children’s paradise.  In one corner, under some low eaves, were the bins of pretend fruit, pretend cereal, and pretend canned goods.  We had the “large” version—nearly to scale, and then the very tiny scale where the oranges were smaller than marbles and you could pretend you were in Lilliput.  

My readers who are Boomers will be thrilled at the mention of toys from the 60s.  But

Showboat

there were some which I have never seen in anyone else’s house.  One was a large pink and white plastic riverboat, called Showboat, with a stage and backdrops for various children’s plays such as Pinocchio.  It came with scripts and cardboard characters. Our rainy day favorite was a set of colorful plastic tiles, called Color Tiles, which could be arranged to make pictures on a peg board. 

This endless supply of belongings to explore convinced me that:

 “The world is so full of a number of things,

I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.” 

   --Robert Louis Stevenson

Which, by the way, was one of the books in our attic!